Extreme Home Makeover, brought to you by Big Oil

Ted Stevens, Alaska's leading Republican and one of the most senior U.S. Senators, was indicted today on 7 counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms. You may remember Sen. Stevens from some of his more famous sponsored legislation, such as the famous "Bridge to Nowhere", and his now infamous statement calling the internet a "series of tubes". What you may not remember is that last summer, the Senator's home was raided by the FBI in connection with an investigation into improper renovations on his Alaskan home that were paid for by the oil engineering company VECO. Apparently, VECO paid for renovations that included an entirely new first floor, wrap-around deck, and other "home improvements" that totaled over $250,000.

What did VECO want in return? According to CBS News, the oil company wanted funding and other aid for the company's projects in Pakistan and Russia, federal grants from several agencies, and help in building a natural gas pipeline in northern Alaska. A small price to pay for the Senator, especially considering WE, the taxpayers, would be paying it.

If that's not enough to enrage you, you should also keep in mind that Sen. Stevens has been one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil exploration and drilling. He's also tried to weaken organic labeling standards for Alaskan seafood, used his position on the Appropriations Committee to prevent funding for research to help protect fish habitat in the North Pacific, prevent the feds from labeling endangered wildlife as protected, and pushed to increase logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forests.

Oh yes, and it appears that crime and corruption are part of the family business, as well.

All I can say about this scandal is that I'm glad Sen. Stevens is up for re-election this year. Not only is he likely to lose his seat, and thus end his 68 year reign of lunacy in the Senate, but it will almost certainly go to Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a democrat. Though Begich supports drilling in ANWR, he has been a vocal and frequent champion of the environment, pushing for renewable fuels and other measures to help combat climate change.

This entire episode reminds me of a quote I heard during undergrad, one that I have keep in the back of my mind whenever I hear about new policies and politicians who support them:

"When evaluating a particular policy or piece of legislation, consider this: Who benefits from it?"

The evidence, in this case, is quite clear: Senator Stevens and Big Oil. The losers? The rest of us.

And now, via Comedy Central, the top 5 Ted Stevens moments of all time:

#5 Ted Stevens attempts to censor cable programming


#4 Ted Stevens calls the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge "Hell"


#3Ted Stevens votes in support of torture


#2 Ted Stevens would rather lose his job then lose his "bridge to nowhere"


#1Ted Stevens explains the internets for you

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

Scouring the web for legal news this past week, I happened to stumble across this fascinating article on Slate about all of the Bush Administration scandals and who could be prosecuted for them. I astounded by how many of these scandals could be traced back to top Bush administration officials, including VP Dick Cheney and Bush himself. But interestingly, it seems the most "tangled" of all our characters in this tragedy is someone you might not expect...

I'll go over a few of the highlights of the article, but I recommend everyone to check it out for themselves. We start, as always, at the top:

George W. Bush / Dick Cheney
Scandals Linked to: 3 (Torture, wiretapping, destroying CIA tapes)

The Web Looks something like: George W. Bush suspended Geneva Convention rights for detainees following the invasion of Afghanistan. He also admitted to essentially giving interrogators free reign on how to coerce answers from detainees, and of even secretly approving certain torture techniques. He also secretly ordered the NSA to wiretapp suspects without obtaining warrants, violating both the U.S. Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). Cheney was part of the "principles committee" that met to approve certain torture techniques, such as the infamous "waterboarding" and even physical assault. On wiretapping, Cheney was said to have defended the President's program of warrantless wiretapping when the then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey expressed concern regarding its legality.

Likelihood of Prosecution: Extremely low. As Slate points out, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won't even talk about impeaching GWB and Cheney.

Harriet Miers
Scandals linked to: 2 (Destruction of CIA tapes, US Attorney firings)

The web looks something like: Miss Miers was one of the first Administration insiders to propose firing all 93 US Attorneys. She talked about the idea early on in Alberto Gonzales' tenure, but he dismissed the idea of a mass firing. Then, taking a page from the Joseph Stalin / Sadaam Hussein guide on rooting out dissenters, had DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson produce a list of the 93 Attorneys ranked in order of who was most loyal to the Administration. In addition, Miers is listed as one of the chief architects behind the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes, a role for which she is currently being investigated by John Durham of the Connecticut US Attorney's office for possible obstruction of justice charges.

Likelihood of Prosecution: Low-Medium. Like Karl Rove, Miers decided to duck out of a Congressional Subpoena in February 2008 and was thus slapped with a contempt charge by the House. Bush's incredibly broad definition of "Executive Privelage", however, means that Miers may eventually end up avoiding any kind of trial/testimony on her actions.

Alberto Gonzales
Scandals Linked to: 5 (Coercive Interrogation, CIA tapes, DOJ Hiring, DOJ Firing, Wiretapping)

The Web Looks like: And now we have the grand-daddy of them all, Alberto Gonzales. Implicated in every major scandal mentioned in the article, Alberto Gonzales' web stretches far and wide. To make things brief: He was on the war council, was one of the original advocators of using torture on detainees, advocated suspending Geneva rights, instructed the Administration on what to do with the CIA tapes, and deferred to Addington, Cheney and Rove on all of the scandals. On top of all this, he also lied to Congress when summoned to testify on his role in the DOJ firings, claiming he had no idea about the firings when emails showed he was briefed at least twice on them. He claimed that there was no debate about the legality of the warrantless wiretapping, when in fact there was, and played dumb in front of congress, apparently unable to recall "which fibs were which", before (mercifully) resigning from his office. Ah, yes, Alberto Gonzales - perhaps no single person has been as potent a force for subverting democracy and rule of law in the 21st Century as our embattled ex-Attorney General.

Likelihood of Prosecution: Not High Enough. While Gonzales' role on the War Council could land him in big trouble as a War Criminal, the likelihood of him being tried for War Crimes is slim to none. While he can be expressly linked to every major scandal, most accounts of his "service" to this country describe him as simply rubber-stamping whatever David Addington, Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney wanted.

As infuriating as it is to read about the breadth and vastness of corruption in the Bush Administration, it is only more frustrating once you realize that all of these potential criminals will likely never face charges for their actions. In the frenzy to combat extremists and fight the "war on terror", we gave our executive branch carte blanche to suspend civil liberties, violate the rule of law, and subvert democracy - in essence, eroding the very fabric of our society, what holds this country together. The Bush Administration has done more to damage the faith and belief in our democracy than anything Osama Bin Laden could have dreamed of. And that, perhaps, is the most tragic irony.

"It is lamentable that to become a good patriot, one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." ~ Voltaire

A Roman Tragedy

Normally I wouldn't write about this, but I am so incredibly incensed and disgusted by this story that I had to at least mention it on this blog.

The story goes like this: Two Roma (or gypsy, an ethnic minority in Italy) girls were selling trinkets and other goods just outside of Naples, when they decided to take a swim in the nearby beach. The four girls soon found themselves caught in a riptide and struggled to keep afloat.

Here's where it gets revolting: On the beach, just a few feet away, dozens of sunbathers WATCHED as the girls drowned, and did nothing. It was minutes before somebody even alerted authorities to rescue the girls.

Even more disgusting: When the girls were finally pulled ashore, the bodies of two of the girls (cousins, aged 12 and 13) who could not be saved were laid out on the beach with towels covering their bodies and their feet poking out. But, as the bodies lay there on the beach waiting for the families of the victims to identify them, the sunbathers simply "carried on having lunch or sunbathing just a few meters away."

I simply could not believe this story when I read it. For this to happen in this day and age, in the cradle of Western Civilization - in a land of people so fiercely self-described as Christians, no less! - is incomprehensible. How anyone, Christian or otherwise, could have looked out on the beach that day, watching two young girls die, and so callously decided to do nothing is so inconceivable, so beyond human understanding that I have to question whether those people were truly human at all. For the life of me I can not - or, perhaps, I just don't want to - believe that they are.

I am well aware of the atrocities humans are capable of committing towards one another in the name of war, religion, love, hatred and otherwise. But these girls weren't enemies of anybody, they weren't prisoners of war or victims of circumstance. They were victims of that most inhuman of human emotions - disregard.

British statesman Edmund Burke once said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I am sure the people sitting on the beach that day would consider themselves "good" people. Perhaps they go to church every Sunday and confess their sins, and donate to charity. But when the time came for these people to act, to do some good, even when faced with the clear knowledge that doing nothing would mean four girls could die, they did what Edmund Burke feared they would do: nothing.

They didn't even get up when the families came to carry their dead daughters off in coffins. They simply looked on, then looked away and went on with their day. After all, the sunsets in Naples are to die for.

"Sometimes I wonder... will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? Then I look around and I realize... God left this place a long time ago." - Blood Diamond

Flagrantly Foul: NBA forced to re-examine lame policy

I've said it before, and I will say it again: College sports are a joke.

Perhaps I should say Division 1 sports, or just those sports that are most popular (basketball and football), but the entire notion of the modern "student-athlete" is a complete farce. Most of the big-time programs in the country are not concerned with producing college diplomas, they're concerned with winning. The players don't care if they average a 1.5 GPA while majoring in "General Studies", as long as they're eligible to play. Most importantly, however, nobody really expects any of these kids to be anything more than just model athletes; if you show up to play, don't get into any off-field trouble, and just PASS your classes (don't worry, if you can't even do that, we'll throw a bunch of money at buying you private tutors and even a "student athlete center" that you'll never attend, but that looks great on recruiting material. Oh, and if you still can't pass, you can always pay a groupie to take your tests for you) you have done all that is expected of you. Student-athletes? Please. These kids live in a world of their own, a strange in-between land that straddles the border between collegiate and professional sports.

My point is that these kids are not students, they don't WANT to be students, and forcing them to pretend to BE students is just a way for the NCAA to pimp these kids into giving them a year or two of their services for free while simultaneously boosting their ratings, keeping veteran pro players happy, and the public placated by insisting these kids are "honing their skills", "maturing into men", and "getting an education" all on our (read: the REAL students' and college sports fans') dime. So you can imagine my delight in hearing about the case of young Brandon Jennings, a kid who decided to say, "Fuck the NCAA and working for free, I'm gonna get paid!" and is now taking his act to Europe until such time that he can be eligible for the NBA draft.

Now, normally I'm not a fan of American talent going to Europe to compete - or, for that matter, European talent coming here (see: Darko Milicic) - but I can completely sympathize with Mr. Jennings in this matter, because the NBA rule is ludicrous. By keeping young talent out of the league for a year, you are preventing them from profiting off of their own services, which is not only unfair to the athletes, it's also a violation of federal anti-trust law (see how I incorporate the law into it? I know, it's fascinating). The NBA had a similar rule in the past that used to force high school athletes to wait FOUR years to enter the draft, but it was challenged in a landmark case by a young player named Spencer Haywood, who eventually got the NBA to drop the rule completely in 1971. Up until 2005, the NBA was free to draft high school athletes, when they initiated their current policy forcing kids to wait a year. What has the rule resulted in? Well, for one, it forced a bunch of kids who have no desire to play college ball into playing for schools who coincidentally became overnight powerhouses (read: Ohio State). But what good has it done for the long-term longevity of these programs and the careers of the athletes involved? How is Ohio State going to keep talent when kids just want to "one and done" it? Did Greg Oden really benefit from having played one year in the NCAA? I'm pretty sure he'd still be a tree trunk with arms if he had gone straight to the pros. And you can't tell me he's happy about playing a year for free, injuring his knee, and then having to sit out his first year of his pro career. Let's recap: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Rashard Lewis, Lebron James - these are just SOME of the NBA All-Stars taken straight out of high school. Are you going to tell me that these guys somehow lost-out by not eating dorm-food and cheating on sociology tests for a year?

Faced with the choice of playing a year for free, waking up early to take exams for subjects he'd never care to learn, and staying broke - or, going to Europe, traveling the world, getting some experience in a new culture living on his own, Jennings made the obvious choice. However, this is a dangerous precedent for the NBA: if more players follow Jennings' example and jet for Europe, they could perhaps risk losing some talent to the Europeans (who are becoming bigger and bigger fans of the sport), especially if they start offering these high school kids long-term contracts. It doesn't matter how much you grew up idolizing USC as a kid, if some European League Rep comes knocking on your door offering you a chance to travel Europe, play basketball, and best of all, get PAID to do it, all the dorm food in the world isn't going convince you college for a year is the right choice.

I love college sports - I find that the genuine intensity and spirit you see in college athletes is rarely reciprocated on the pro level. But that is partly due to the fact that college sports are, and always have been about, the schools and their students. When you force kids who would rather be professionals into playing for a school, you jeopordize all that is great about college sports. Kids who would normally get a shot to play for their schools are forced to sit behind would-be lottery picks eager to show off for NBA scouts. Students, faculty and fans form ill-opinions of athletes who give their programs bad names by misbehaving or treating their academic obligations as secondary. And worst of all, you risk the longevity and sustainability of the program by inviting greedy agents, eager to tempt young athletes with a taste of their future profits, who can bring NCAA sanctions onto the schools these athletes play for.

Brandon Jennings will almost certainly make a big splash in Europe, and the Europeans have the NBA to thank for it. The only question is, how many more will follow in his footsteps before the NBA realizes how flawed their policy is?

The I.C.C. gets it right

According to this article on the Washington Post, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will seek an arrest warrant for current Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. This is the first time the ICC has sought such a warrant on a current head of state.

The development of this story has both excited me and infused me with a great deal of uncertainty; as someone who has followed the events in Darfur over the past four years and shared the outrage over the atrocities being committed in the name of al-Bashir's government, I am truly overjoyed to see that officials in the international community are (finally) going to hold al-Bashir responsible for his actions. At the same time, (assuming the ICC grants the warrant) I wonder how the U.N. is going to address the issue of arresting a current head of state. Certainly, al-Bashir isn't going to simply turn himself in to the ICC, so one assumes that he will have to be caught if and when he leaves the country, or once another ruler is elected. Still, a man who commands the army of an entire nation and countless Janjaweed militia certainly isn't going to go down without a fight. So what recourse has the U.N. left itself with regards to bringing al-Bashir to justice?

It is one thing to issue an arrest warrant for a criminal, it is wholly another to arrest him - especially when that person is a current President. I am really excited (as only a political science - law nerd like myself can be) to see how this whole episode plays out. Al-Bashir's government has promised "grave consequences" and warned that the peace process will be "shattered" if the ICC continues with its pursuit of the warrant, which in all likelihood means more trouble for the already suffering people of Darfur. This, of course, is unfortunate, but if it means a possible end to their suffering at the hands of al-Bashir and the Janjaweed, then perhaps this is the risk they (the ICC and the U.N.) must take.

As the Washington Post points out, "ICC advocates contend that such court actions contribute to peace efforts," and point to the cases of Slobodan Milosevic and former Liberian President Charles Taylor, whose U.N. tribunals "have ultimately contributed to stability" in their respective countries. However what this statement ignores is the fact that these two men were brought to justice only AFTER they were already removed from power. As I stated earlier, the fact that Al-Bashir is still the current President of Sudan makes this case entirely unique, and historic.

Why the world needs more lawyers

We've all heard them time and time again: Lawyer jokes. We all know at least one, if not dozens. Here's one of my favorites:

Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a herd of buffalo?
A: The lawyer charges more.

Yes, it's easy to poke fun of lawyers, for any number of reasons; the common (though widely false) belief that lawyers "lie" to earn their living, that they defend criminals, that they earn too much money, and that they don't deserve how much they earn. These last two points I'd like to touch on briefly, first: Lawyers earn what the market has determined they can earn; in other words, if you're one of the best lawyers in the country, and people are willing to pay you $800 an hour for your services, then that's what you should make. I don't see anybody complaining about how much doctors and surgeons make (which is comparatively MUCH higher for FAR fewer hours of actual work), although this is one of the main reasons many of us (read:me) can't afford health insurance and millions of Americans go without it. Yet, do you see people protesting doctors' salaries, or making ridiculous jokes about how much doctors earn? No, because among other reasons, people simply feel like doctors "deserve it" - yet, somehow, lawyers don't. I am sure you would feel differently about how much your lawyer earned if he successfully kept you out of jail, or from being sued. And, for the record, most lawyers don't earn NEARLY as much as people think they do - the national average is somewhere between $45k and $80k, depending on which figures you choose.

But why does the world need more lawyers? Because, simply, lawyers (or at least good lawyers) are skeptics; we are trained not to take everything people tell us as true, and to question every statement given to us. Lawyers are trained in the Socratic method, named, of course, after Socrates, a man who lived (and died) to question the status quo and challenged people to reevaluate themselves and their beliefs. I think too often we are numbed into taking everything people tell us as true, simply because it is easier than digging deep to uncover the truth for ourselves. That is truly a shame, because I believe 99% of what people tell you is complete B.S. And it doesn't matter who is feeding you the b.s. - the President, your clergy, your mother - you still owe yourself the right to figure out the truth on your own. Think of all the things human beings have done based on the assumptions that were handed down to us by others: the Crusades, the Inquisition, 9/11, the War in Iraq; do you think if the people who were being handed these instructions were intelligent enough to question them and brave enough to challenge them, that any of these events could have happened?

Well, that's just what we lawyers do: we are constantly questioning, challenging the norm, and reevaluating our culture and our legal system in light of what we find.

Remember that next time somebody makes a lawyer joke.

California Dreamin'

So, just over a month to go until I leave for San Francisco and the next three years of my life, and all I can think about is:

How am I going to afford any of this?

Aside from the astronomical costs of the actual school, San Francisco is just not a cheap place to live in general, and that's if you have a job (which I surely will not). Food, transportation (read: BART pass), books....Ugh. It's all so much to think about.

In the meantime, I've enjoyed spending the last few months at home, doing as little as possible. I don't think I've ever been so content to do nothing as I have since I arrived from my study abroad. I've been spending quite a bit of time with my friends and family when I can, but mostly just enjoying these last precious weeks before the fall, and the beginning of what has been promised to me by everyone I've talked with to be the beginning of three years of hell. I'm not so sure it will be quite that bad, but just the same, I'm prepared for the worst. I remember what everybody told me about Madison, too, and that didn't turn out so bad, right?

One question I'm tired of answering is, "So where are you going to law school?". It's bad enough that few people have ever heard of Hastings (outside the legal world, anyway), but it's worse when I have to deal with the accompanying slew of questions that inevitably follow: "Where's that?" (San Francisco), Why there?" (great school, great city), "Why didn't you go to UCLA?" (didn't get in), Where else did you apply? (everywhere), "What kind of law do you want to do?" (I don't know yet), etc., etc. I don't mention that I turned down $23,000 /yr. from Pepperdine, in Malibu of all places, to go to Hastings because that would just make me seem insane to the outside observer. And in all honesty, to myself sometimes.

Which isn't to say I regret my decision - quite the opposite, in fact, is true - but it certainly would make answering those questions a lot easier.