The law school threw a dinner party downtown for us 2Ls, to celebrate us reaching the midway (if you know Hyde Park, you'll laugh at the pun) of our law school career. The dinner felt rushed though: arrive, 10 minutes later seated and eating, courses come out rapid fire, speech by Professor Masur, buses arrive, we go home. It was impressive.
* * *
The bullet-proof tailor of Bogota. This is really, really cool. Involves a reporter getting shot in the gut.
Egyptian journalist union punishes two members for contacts with Israel. One of the writers is "editor in chief of the state-run weekly Democratiya, or Democracy", the title of which I find unbelievably ironic.
Anti-Semitic acts soared in France last year.
Radical rabbi blames gays for natural disasters, warns against eliminating DADT. For the record, Israel has let gays and lesbians serve openly for over 25 years (and it's still kicking!).
Appeals court reverses trial court decision which had thrown out genocide charges against Sudanese President Bashir; Kevin Jon Heller defends the reversal against critics.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) wants it all ways: the joy of controlling the legislative agenda, and the joy of attacking mythical "liberal extremists" for controlling the legislative agenda.
Justice Department issues a recruitment call for mentally retarded lawyers. Sarah Palin is presumably thrilled.
I know I'm doing that thing where I nitpick but censorship, as bad as it is, in the broad sense isn't incompatible with democracy. (Of course, we could argue that freedom of speech is necessary for the informed decision-making necessary in a functioning democracy or else we essentially vote ourselves into a hole we can't get out of. But the same holds for any kind of supermajority requirement. Either way, that inquiry is well beyond the broad sense. What I'm really going on about here is how democracy has practically become a synonym for everything a given speaker likes and opposed to everything he or she dislikes.)
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't the censorship I found ironic, it was the "state-run".
ReplyDeleteI dunno, isn't any form of government state-run by definition?
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's spell this out.
ReplyDeleteEgypt is an autocracy. It runs a newspaper called democracy. This is irony.
Ah, now I see it.
ReplyDeleteWith every nation and its uncle proclaiming itself a "Democratic Republic" or something I missed what was right under my nose.