It’s really perverse how hitting the snooze button on the alarm is like a trigger to make me fall immediately and deeply asleep, only to be rudely awakened again 9 minutes later when the alarm goes off again. On some deep psychological level I think this must be ruining my life.

Now that the Democratic primary is really (more or less) over, three things:

1. Regarding misogyny, it seems true to me that our society has a greater taboo against public denigration based upon race than it does against public denigration of gender. So yeah, perhaps Hillary (two Ls) was stereotyped and gender-bashed in ways that Barack (with a C) was not race bashed. It was subtle, but sometimes that’s the worst kind of critique. I’m sure w/in a year or two there will be a dozen books analyzing this
2. It would be really cool to have an Obama/Clinton ticket, but can you imagine being President Obama w/both Bill and Hill in your White House telling you what to do all the time? I can’t see it working.
3. Lots of things are younger than McCain.

Listening to the NPR tell me that groups of Hilary Clinton supporters are going to vote for McCain if Obama becomes the Democratic candidate. Exqueeze me? You think the media and the Democratic leadership have been unfair to Clinton because she’s a woman, so your response is to vote for yet another old white male who believes far less of what you believe than does Obama? This is a strategy? This is reasonable? This makes any sense whatsoever?

I don’t think Hilary should stop this madness because I’m a misogynist. I think Hilary should stop this madness because she’s encouraging the kind of insanity voiced by these supporters. She could easily have put an end to this weeks ago by simply saying, ok, it’s not going to happen this year, let’s all get behind Obama. She could have done that w/a great deal of dignity, she could have claimed victory in many ways, and she could have kicked McCain in the balls by helping to further unify the Democratic party. Instead, she fights on, encouraging extremism and division w/in her own party, and for what?

As the NPR story says, someone has to lose. If you want to say that Hilary lost because too many people just want to keep women down, well, ok. So does that mean Obama won because so many people want to lift black men up? Could it be Obama ran a better campaign? Could it be his speeches and positions on issues just resonated more with more voters? Could that even be possible?

Nah, No way. It’s all about woman-bashing. Absolutely.

Grrr.

Listening to the NPR tell me that groups of Hilary Clinton supporters are going to vote for McCain if Obama becomes the Democratic candidate. Exqueeze me? You think the media and the Democratic leadership have been unfair to Clinton because she’s a woman, so your response is to vote for yet another old white male who believes far less of what you believe than does Obama? This is a strategy? This is reasonable? This makes any sense whatsoever?

I don’t think Hilary should stop this madness because I’m a misogynist. I think Hilary should stop this madness because she’s encouraging the kind of insanity voiced by these supporters. She could easily have put an end to this weeks ago by simply saying, ok, it’s not going to happen this year, let’s all get behind Obama. She could have done that w/a great deal of dignity, she could have claimed victory in many ways, and she could have kicked McCain in the balls by helping to further unify the Democratic party. Instead, she fights on, encouraging extremism and division w/in her own party, and for what?

As the NPR story says, someone has to lose. If you want to say that Hilary lost because too many people just want to keep women down, well, ok. So does that mean Obama won because so many people want to lift black men up? Could it be Obama ran a better campaign? Could it be his speeches and positions on issues just resonated more with more voters? Could that even be possible?

Nah, No way. It’s all about woman-bashing. Absolutely.

Grrr.

Today is finally the day of the Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania. Keep your fingers crossed that today will finally put an end to the godawful self-swiftboating the Democratic party has been giving itself for the last many weeks. Let’s have a decisive win for Obama and move on to making the case that he’s going to be a better president than McCain, ok? Priorities, people, priorities!

I have to stop reading the news; it only reminds me that the world is going straight to hell in an American-made handbasket. Exhibit A:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

Thank goodness that “war on terra” is going so well!

Closer to home, I recently lost a probation violation hearing where we were asking the court to excuse my client’s failure to complete her restitution payments by the end of her sentence because my client had made a good faith effort to pay. The law says that failure to pay restitution must be excused if you’ve made a good faith effort because your obligation to pay remains with you for life, the “victim” has civil remedies for collection, and the state can garnish wages and tax returns to ensure you complete your restitution regardless of whether you’re on probation. So we had testimony that my client has worked a low-wage job throughout probation, working 32-35 hours/wk, which is all the employer would give her. She paid about 20 out of 36 months, she moved her family to a cheaper apartment to save money, her husband was in jail through part of the time and so could not contribute to household expenses for her and her two kids, plus when he was out he had his own considerable restitution to pay in an unrelated matter, etc. Finally, we had evidence that during this period, creditors brought three separate collection actions against my client for debts she and her husband incurred prior to the time this restitution was ordered, so for most of the time she was supposed to pay restitution her wages were being garnished for other debts.

Of course, after all of this, the court said, “You could have tried harder! You have cable tv and your son has internet.’ (Testimony was that son pays for the internet himself.) “You should have sold your tv and skipped those luxuries to prioritize restitution.” The court revoked my client’s sentence and started it over again. Awesome. I have a suggestion: Why doesn’t my client stop paying rent and move into a shelter so that much more of her income can go to restitution! That would really be trying, wouldn’t it?

What else? Oh, I recently learned that two of my “favorite” judges have very interesting “pet peeves.” One of them says his pet peeve is lawyers who can’t control their clients and waste his time at hearings they are totally going to lose. Great, so we should just ignore the fact that even if this judge denies the motion, an appellate court might very well rule the other way? It sounds to me like he’s saying that attorneys making a record for appeal and/or fighting for every possible hope their clients might have are wasting his time and annoying him. This from a judge who also recently asked me in an off-the-record pre-trial status conference, “Why doesn’t your client just plead guilty?”

Another judge’s pet peeve was cross examination. “It takes too long and just repeats the state’s case, so why are you wasting my time?” (I’m obviously paraphrasing.) So the judge is saying that his pet peeve is the entire defense case!? How often do we end up going to trial w/nothing but cross to make our case!? I don’t believe this judge was ever a defense attorney and it’s pretty clear he never prepared a cross-examination of a key witness, yet I have to practice in front of him on a regular basis. Grrrrrrr!

The song on constant rotation these days is Why Do I Keep Counting by The Killers. I mean, really, if all of our days are numbered…??

In the comments to a news article describing how a man was beaten badly by two other men after stopping them from raping a woman we find a fierce debate about that to do w/the “trash” (poor and homeless people) who live and hang out downtown and on the south side of town. From that debate comes this paean to capitalism:

People Please!!! The porblem is not the skate park, it has nothing to do with the skate park. It has nothing to do with the kids. We are all good, caring & providing parents. The problem is the “trash” on the south side. Call me and think of me what you want, that is fine. I have a solution. If the population of the “do gooders” want to help the “trash” so much then let them. We should be able to have a deduction on our taxes for the welfare that is given out. Those who want to help, the “do gooders”, then can pay for it. They then could have this deduction taken from their money. The ones who care about and take care of the ones they love can keep their money and spend it on the ones they care for and love. We would really see the “do gooders” numbers decline! I am sick of hand outs! This is America, you get what you work for.

That self-righteous screed could also be characterized as vulgar selfishness, racism, and ignorance, but really aren’t those just natural byproducts of our wonderful capitalist society?

Contrast with this explanation of freeganism:

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

Hmm.

The Bush Administration is trying to convince Congress and the rest of us that it needs permanent permission to spy on on us, and that the telecom industry should have retroactive protection from liability for their actions in helping the gov’t spy on us. How are they trying to convince us of that this is necessary? In this story the sales pitch goes like this: Everything the government and the telecom companies are doing and have done is legal now and always has been, but we have to pass this new law so we can make sure everything the government and the telecom companies are doing and have done is legal now and always has been.

Right.

p.s.: I see that I called yesterday “black tuesday.” It was obviously Thursday. Oops.

Fred Thompson has quit the race to become the Republican nominee for president. I won’t miss him; he scared me. Is it just me or does he look like skeletor?

For the rest, according to a few very narrow questions, I should apparently vote as follows:

99% Mike Gravel
98% Dennis Kucinich
82% John Edwards
78% Barack Obama
77% Chris Dodd
76% Joe Biden
75% Hillary Clinton
71% Bill Richardson
32% Rudy Giuliani
28% Ron Paul
20% John McCain
16% Mitt Romney
15% Mike Huckabee
14% Tom Tancredo
5% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

No real surprises there. Gravel’s rock in the water had me at the first ripple and I’ve thought since 2004 Kucinich would be a great president except that he’d get nothing done b/c he’d be seen as too radical and the corporatized middle-road dems (e.g. Hilary) would not get behind him.

(Quiz found via Curia Advisari Vult, a PD blog I just learned about through PD Stuff.)

So why were all the polls in New Hampshire wrong? Supposedly Hilary was on her last legs; a solid loss in New Hampshire and her own staff was planning to tell her to pull out of the race. The polls all had her losing by 5-13 points, yet we’re supposed to believe that just because her eyes got a little watery in response to a question that thousands of voters in New Hampshire changed their minds and said, “Hey, that Hilary would make a great president. I’m voting for her!” Sorry, I’m just not buying it. They use electronic voting machines in New Hampshire primaries, don’t they? Hmph.

In other news, I’m still looking for an adequate way to collect notes on my cases and stay on top of The Caseload that Ate My Brain. I know someone out here has been in this pickle; how did you get out of it? Still seeking suggestions…

Case Management: Following up on yesterday’s post about some solution to help me track my work on my many cases, I’ve had a chance to search the Google for options and so far, not much. The best candidates I’ve found are Notes Organizer Deluxe and myBase, but I haven’t had a chance to actually try either out to see if it would really do what I’m looking for. Another option might be something like Filemaker, which might allow me to more or Iess design the database I need, rather than trying to find one that works for me. I certainly don’t need an entire case management package; our office is going to use Justware for that whether I like it or not. But, like I said, Justware is so awful (primarily because it’s so *slow*) that it won’t even come close to doing what I need. The search continues; suggestions welcome! What do you use?

Presidential Candidate: I admit, I’m just starting to pay more than passing attention to the campaign, but one thing is immediately clear: Barack Obama wins hands down when it comes to public speaking, both on radio and television interviews and in big speeches. The man is just awesome when it comes to stringing one sentence after another in a convincing, genuine, inspiring, and persuasive way. His speech last night compared to Hillary’s or McCain’s? Those two are not even in the same league as he is. For that reason alone I’m almost sold on Obama. After the last seven years of a pResident who could barely speak a single sentence properly, I’ll admit I’m swooning at the prospect of having a president like Obama who would make such a great impression every time he opens his mouth.