Law Students

What profit a man

Posted on May 22, 2009
Watching the ND Commencement on television Sunday, my first thoughts were that Fr. Jenkins and President Obama were going to come off very well in most subsequent reviews. They were clearly a hit with the students, and they did very well in seizing their moment...

Dialogue

Posted on May 17, 2009

Center of the storm

Posted on May 17, 2009
This afternoon at the St. Mary's commencement ceremony (which was lovely, by the way) a huge military plane flew in low over the campus -- advance agents and materials for the president's visit tomorrow. Since getting into town yesterday, I've seen a lot of protesters on ND Avenue and Angela/Edison and heard a lot of people talking about the controversy...

On campus this morning

Posted on May 17, 2009
Cool and calm on campus this morning, but with a bit of an edge in the air. It looked like ND Response was going to get a good turnout as people were streaming in hours early, though not yet collected on South Quad. I saw Bill Kirk driving around in his golf cart to check on arrangements...

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No news isn't good news

Posted on May 06, 2009
I haven't heard or seen anything at all regarding last Friday's Board meeting for Notre Dame, which I think is disappointing. Presumably if the trustees had decided to take action or make a public statement censuring Fr. Jenkins, they would have done so by now...

Unapologetic

Posted on April 27, 2009
Father Jenkins has used a variety of talking points and defenses to counter criticisms of his decision on President Obama, including employing poor Biblical citations. I don't appreciate his attempts to spin those of us who are seriously concerned about his actions, but I feel worse for Notre Dame Club officers who are getting spun by him as well at the same time as these officers are hearing lots of criticism and concern themselves...

Compounding the embarrassment

Posted on April 27, 2009
Breaking: Mary Ann Glendon, in a public letter to Father Jenkins, has declined to receive the Laetare Medal this year. In her letter, posted at First Things where she is on their editorial board I believe, she says she was originally honored to receive the award, but then realized she would have to change her speech once President Obama was announced...

Poor excuses

Posted on April 24, 2009
I am hearing from a few relatively high-placed sources that Father Jenkins is continuing to change/extend his justifications to donors for conferring the honorary degree on President Obama. While he consistently states that the University is pro-life, and does not and will not support the President's positions (and actions, one should add) on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, among other things, Fr...

Ironically, ASU apologizes . . .

Posted on April 20, 2009
... for not doing enough to properly honor President Obama during his commencement speech at Arizona State. In fact, after they said that they were not conferring an honorary degree because, they said, the president did not yet have a body of work sufficient to merit it, they heard howls of outrage from people who thought this was an insult and completely inappropriate...

Getting the (canon) law wrong

Posted on April 11, 2009
Canon lawyer Ed Peters is harsh in his reply to Fr. Jenkins's interpretation of the USCCB statement "Catholics in Political Life." Fr. Jenkins said, in a letter to the ND Board of Trustees, that he consulted with canon lawyers who confirmed his reading that the bishops' statement only applied to Catholics who acted against Catholic teaching...

Retrenchment

Posted on April 11, 2009
Over the past two weeks, the University has only been digging in with its defense of inviting the president and giving him an honorary degree. 32 bishops around the country have spoken up to condemn the decision to honor the President in contravention of Catholic principles and the 2004 USCCB statement...

More fallout

Posted on March 25, 2009
The Obama invitation and honorary degree has attracted more widespread attention and criticism than I would have expected since the White House broke the news on Friday, but while I wish the criticism weren't necessary in the first place (if Obama weren't invited), it's certainly warranted now...

Scandalous invitation

Posted on March 24, 2009
The news broke late Friday that President Obama will be Notre Dame's commencement speaker this year. That the nation's preeminent Catholic university would invite the most pro-abortion president we've ever had to give such a prominent address and receive an honorary law degree is astonishing and unjustifiable...

Where I've been

Posted on January 22, 2009
With this little guy, born November 12, 2008. He's pretty fun so far :)

Change to believe in?

Posted on January 22, 2009
Among President Obama's first official acts scheduled perhaps as soon as today, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, will be ones destructive of human life. He will sign an executive order overturning the Mexico City policy, which was implemented by President Reagan to stop federal funding of international abortions...

Another bad feeling about this

Posted on November 08, 2008
After the field goal kicker finds his mojo, the quarterback loses it . . . and we start turning the ball over and piling up penalties again on the road.Oh, Irish, you're killing me.

Policy preferences

Posted on November 06, 2008
I'm disappointed that Obama won last night, not least because I think if Mr. Hope'n'change has any vision at all for this country besides promoting vacuous feel-goodism, it's probably a severely leftist vision with which I'll almost entirely disagree...

Musical follies

Posted on October 20, 2008
The music situation at our new parish has, if anything, become even harder to bear over the last few weeks than when we first started attending. I usually love singing at Mass, but I can?t bring myself to sing most of this stuff at all, much less with any enthusiasm, simply because it is so bland and/or even inappropriate for Mass...

Alaska moose rap

Posted on October 19, 2008
I think Sarah Palin showed herself to be a great sport on SNL last night. Amy Poehler's Alaska moose rap was pretty entertaining, but just watch the Governor dancing along. Heh.This blogger has more analysis and the first "press conference" skit as well.

Getting it

Posted on October 17, 2008
Surprisingly nice video from MSNBC on how Sarah Palin has connected with other parents of special needs children around the country. I keep thinking she must be overwhelmed by the response to her (since she's only six months into being such a parent herself) but the joyful way she reacts to and engages with such other families indicates rather that she's probably encouraged herself by this community of parents...

Not Murphy's Law

Posted on October 15, 2008
There must be some other name for the football law that says, pretty simply, the team with the fewest turnovers wins. The Irish were able to escape that situation against SDSU this year, but otherwise, you can pretty much be assured that if you turn the ball over five times in a game (while not taking it away the same amount), you're going to lose...

Showing up an aspirational peer

Posted on October 08, 2008
A few thoughts on Stanford:- It didn't take long for Clausen to have another career day. The run game receded a bit this week from the showing against Purdue, forcing us to rely more on the passing game, but - we have an increasingly effective passing game, and it's outstanding to watch...

And we're back

Posted on October 01, 2008
This past weekend provided a MUCH better experience in South Bend than last year's sole trip, which was (sadly) to the USC game. Saturday, we had the best offensive showing in two years. After a slow start, the defense (led by true freshman Blanton's interception return for a TD) kept us enough in the game that when the offense finally started to click, it was a great thing to behold...

Lackluster

Posted on September 20, 2008
Well, after an exciting day with Michigan last week, where everything seemed to come together great - offensive effectiveness, solid and opportunistic defense, and great special teams work, especially from Mike Anello - nothing's working that well at Michigan State...

Sloppy, sloppy

Posted on September 10, 2008
Well, Saturday's game wasn't much fun to watch, and the end feeling was not so much of confidence but of uncertain relief. In retrospect, I feel a bit better about things, but of course it will all be contingent upon fixing the easy errors that so managed to kill our momentum that we scraped by with an 8-point win instead of skating with a 22-point win...

Hope springs eternal

Posted on September 06, 2008
For everyone else the college football season kicked off last weekend, but the Irish have had to wait one more week. I've seen some of the practice videos and read the press conference transcripts from the past month and believe there is plenty of reason to be optimistic that this season will be a definite improvement over last season - maybe even a success by the Irish faithfuls' exacting, always-high standards :) We certainly have the talent, and now a lot of it should be seasoned by, basically, a year of getting pounded into the ground...

All Favre, all the time

Posted on August 07, 2008
A few weeks ago, ESPN added a "Favre" category to its league scrolls. That's right . . . NFL, NCAA, AL, NL, FAVRE. Good grief. What is up with the worshipfulness? (My favorite quote from Al Michaels last year is recounted in this post.) And this summer, it's for a guy who did in fact retire in March and has just been jerking around his former team for over a month now...

Cape Town Bound

Posted on August 06, 2008
I made a happy discovery last Tuesday - Ewan McGregor (he of my ongoing minor crush) and Charley Boorman did another cross-continental motorcyle trip last year ("Long Way Down"), this time from Scotland to South Africa, and it's just starting to be aired in the U...

Final countdown: T minus 29 days

Posted on July 25, 2008
I'll try to make this the last post about bugs, but I can't help it. I'm just disgusted by it, and counting down the days until I can move into our new house (with which, the sellers told me, they almost never have had bug problems). Every morning I either get completely dressed before coming downstairs, or if staying in pajamas, at least freshen up and make use of the flip flops I leave at the bottom of the stairs...

Vanity of vanities

Posted on July 23, 2008
Reading this post and comments from a "mommy blogger" about children's oh-so-humbling effects on their post-pregnant moms just makes me cringe. And then laugh. I will confess I'm not humble enough yet to be sanguine about the weight gain thing - but it'll come, I have no doubt, as this little guy only gets bigger:

Side effects

Posted on June 23, 2008
I went to the eye doctor this evening after work because I noticed on Saturday night some serious blurring in my left eye, and this after a lot of redness a few weeks ago and ongoing sensitivity and watery eyes at night, etc. I thought originally it was just more severe allergies than normal this spring, but it turns out no, it's another side effect of pregnancy...

Another adult step

Posted on June 22, 2008
So, aside from moving to Texas, changing work environments completely, getting knocked up, taking another bar exam and everything else going on this year, we have also decided to embark on another "adult" step in our lives, and buy a house :) I did end up giving up on the dream house ideal, but given the restricted universe of 1970s suburban ranch houses we became limited to, I'm very happy about the house we did find...

There can only be one

Posted on June 13, 2008
Sitting at work yesterday morning - trying to review a few surveys and keep up with the massive amounts of email coming in for this New York deal - I felt this 'pop - pop' feeling a bit lower than where you would normally feel gas bubbles. It was an odd realization, that the movements I have been on the lookout for had suddenly arrived (or I was suddenly aware of them - maybe I missed them earlier on)...

Welcome, Pope Benedict!

Posted on April 15, 2008
I'm very happy about the pope's visit to the U.S. this week. While I can't go to the Mass at RFK on Thursday or see the pope along his route at all, probably, I am excited that I get to attend the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Friday morning in D...

Happy Easter

Posted on March 26, 2008
Happy Easter! This weekend my brother-in-law was confirmed into the Church, so we went to see him at Kansas, where he is a student. It was my first trip to that state and the campus seemed pretty nice - not unlike most other college campuses, but, surprisingly to me, hilly...

Irish day

Posted on March 15, 2008
This morning we headed out to the Sam's Club parking lot on Greenville and Park to "tailgate" for the St. Patrick's Day parade with the ND Club. Thanks to my sister the coordinator, the Club had a float with some food, t-shirts, plenty of ND-Irish decorations and beer...

Flotsam and the bar exam

Posted on February 27, 2008
I have made it seven weeks through this move, job transfer, studying, and two days of the bar exam without a meltdown, but I don't think I can make it through tonight. This test is just really difficult, and tomorrow is twelve essays that you can pretty much guarantee will include some issues that I just flat have no idea where to even start on...

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow

Posted on February 21, 2008
No, that's not a reference to the latest amazing message of "hope" from the Dems (although, even more than when John Edwards promised to make the lame walk, Obama's promises to "heal a nation and repair the world" - and attendant Messianic swooning by voters and media alike - are both hilarious and cringeworthy)...

Sunday school teacher smackdown

Posted on February 16, 2008
Inside Catholic tracked down this great clip from the Colbert Report the other night. He discussed the Fall with Philip Zimbardo, a guy who apparently argues Lucifer didn't act wrongly because God was being unjust, or something like that. I was watching the show after class (I can be awake for it now that I live the Central time zone - ha) and remember sitting forward a bit stunned at the intensity of Colbert's explanation of how Hell was created that he launches into at the end of the interview:This is from a guy who's recited the entire Nicene Creed on his show in thirty seconds before...

BarBri's over

Posted on February 15, 2008
Next step, bar exam. I'm running into an unexpected impediment to studying, though: this *!@#$$%^ dog next door to our townhouse, that starts barking incessantly every morning around 7:30 and won't shut up. Wow, it's annoying - and really hard to shut out...

Super Tuesday

Posted on February 05, 2008
For a relatively political person, I paid little attention to the 2008 race all of last year because I was annoyed it had started so early. Now that actual primaries are happening, I've missed them all between work and class. Mostly, I'm still bummed Fred Thompson never took off; Romney is otherwise closest to my positions, and I would vote for him in Texas if my registration is processed in time, but now it looks like McCain will finish strongest tonight...

Multistate musings

Posted on February 05, 2008
On January 2, we packed up the apartment. On January 3, we drove to Nashville, and on January 4, we arrived in Dallas. On January 5, I encountered my first Texas-sized bugs - several of 'em - running across the kitchen floor in the empty townhouse we were renting, and I promptly freaked out...

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2007
Everyone has their Christmas traditions in terms of what films they watch, and mine is like half of America's: watching a Charlie Brown Christmas (with popcorn and hot chocolate). Given how popular it is, I'm always amused to read how the network executives were originally horrified by the show, with jazz score, lack of laugh tracks, and - oh, yes - Scripture reading...

Not as SAD

Posted on December 04, 2007
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving - I enjoyed the vacation days and had a very nice holiday eating good food (everything from turkey to ceviche) and watching football (the biggest reason I love fall). Aside from that, however, I have been more listless and down for several weeks, struggling, as I customarily do, to adjust to the time change...

Dear PAC-10 refs: Are you totally blind or just legally blind?

Posted on November 24, 2007
Yeah.ETA: Here is the video:

Random thoughts

Posted on November 17, 2007
1. When did Southwest Airlines stop being cheap?2. My current daily read is the Housing Bubble Blog, which collects articles from various bubble areas around the country to marshal ever more evidence that the insanely easy access to credit and steep run-up in home prices over the last five years was simply unsustainable...

Dinner gala

Posted on November 15, 2007
One of my favorite things about being in D.C. these last few years has been getting to go to the Federalist Society national convention dinner each fall, since my firm usually buys two tables. (As a member, I could register for the convention panels, and they always sound really interesting, but I can't usually make it off of work...

An epic battle

Posted on November 15, 2007
...of one-win teams approaches this Saturday. We'll be barbequeing with a friend of ours (a Duke alum) and hoping to see the Irish take advantage of our last best chance to win this season. At least we don't have a quarterback controversy anymore! I enjoyed watching Clausen for the most part last weekend (except when he got leveled by unblocked defenders and receivers dropped ten separate passes - not his fault) and think it's evident he just has more a leadership presence on the field...

Anchors aweigh

Posted on November 07, 2007
We all knew the season was a wash, and most of us were just looking for signs of improvement anymore. Nevertheless, the frustrating thing about Saturday's loss to Navy was that the Irish appeared quite capable of winning - i.e., the production from our running backs was strong enough to have produced a win - but didn't show enough improvement where it would have counted to actually win...

$@#$&^!

Posted on November 03, 2007
Win or lose this game in overtime (I don't expect a win), there will be a lot to say. But I'll start with a few here:Sharpley is not good.Playcalling is indefensible (see, e.g., fake field goal, second drive; no field goal attempt, second-to-last drive).

Go Gameday

Posted on November 03, 2007
Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso just picked the Irish in today's game, as we try to make it 44 in a row against Navy. They even predicted we'd score a lot of points! Well, that would be fantastic, but we'll have to see whether the bye week helped this team out and whether they actually are able to turn this last part of the season into something to build on for next year...

A nicer weekend

Posted on October 29, 2007
At least we didn't lose to BYE, like some pundits predicted. Heh.

At least there's a bye

Posted on October 24, 2007
Ouch. I haven't reached this level of disgust with the Irish offense since 2004, but Saturday was so unpleasant I also did something I haven't done since 2004 - "turned off" the game in the fourth quarter by leaving early. Beforehand, I had joked that I would be there until the end if the score was anything better than 38-0...

Could this be the day?

Posted on October 20, 2007
Well, maybe not, but I hope the Irish give SC a heck of a run. And who knows? The opportunities are there if we want to take advantage of them. I'm not really sure how much of a jump start Sharpley will give the offense - as Weis accurately noted earlier this week, he really can be hot and cold, and only a few lucky breaks kept his INT total from looking like Clausen's last week...

When you're blaming the refs

Posted on October 13, 2007
... it means you didn't play well enough to win. Which is undeniably true tonight. And yet, it really sucks when the refs kill your comeback attempt by first taking away a first down, then taking away a touchdown on the fourth down. Thanks so much for that...

Memos to Pat Haden

Posted on October 13, 2007
None of your viewing audience OF NOTRE DAME FANS thinks the "Push by Bush" was particularly cute, as you seem to think.Additionally, since you are supposed to be calling NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL, the constant favoritism for our opponents gets old.

Middle of the field

Posted on October 10, 2007
Charlie's press conference transcript is up from yesterday here (I don't think there was a transcript of the post-game presser, though, and I haven't been able to watch that one yet). With regard to my earlier question of "where did the slants go?" it appears that it was a deliberate call:Q...

Well, that's a relief

Posted on October 08, 2007
The Irish finally put one in the win column at the Rose Bowl last night, and that felt pretty good. It was fairly ugly on offense, but a win's a win. Go Irish! A few thoughts:- What a fantastic night for the defense. They gave up 282 yards, but forced seven turnovers and played smart and aggressive all night...

Signs of progress

Posted on October 01, 2007
There was some actual excitement at McFadden's on Saturday afternoon for about 20 minutes. We had a drive? We had three drives? Excelente. I'll write more later - just wanted to say that for those who are taking a "football vacation" by watching not so much for wins, but just for marked signs of progress on a young squad, this was a pretty good day.

Tories and Trek

Posted on September 30, 2007
After holding out for more than a year, Kathryn Lopez finally delivered: Star Trek Weekend on NRO. Now, as John Podhoretz concedes, TNG was basically "a conservative's nightmare." But I wasn't so politically attuned in my formative years, and even if I had been, I clearly wouldn't have been alone in still liking Trek...

Beat Sparty

Posted on September 22, 2007
Vannie's MSU preview is predicting another loss. Ay. Regardless, I'll be down at McFadden's with the ND Club today and hopefully finding some things to cheer about. Go Irish!Halftime update (stayed home instead of heading downtown): See, now that's improvement...

Appropriate judgment

Posted on September 22, 2007
On Tuesday, the Maryland Court of Appeals turned down a challenge to the state's Defense of Marriage Act, declining to invent a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage. I was surprised but pleased by the opinion, as the Court applied an appropriate standard of review (rational basis) for the existing DOMA, and concluded that the statute did withstand rational basis scrutiny...

Dazed and confused

Posted on September 17, 2007
Well, things didn't improve at all on Saturday after the first quarter, including in the measures (penalties and errors) I forgot to mention at the time. They all got worse, except for the fact that we finally went into positive yardage on offense - but not rushing, because the numerous sacks are still negating every hard-fought gain in this regard...

All signs point to negative

Posted on September 15, 2007
After one quarter, I see: another 2 sacks; another 3 fumbles; more total negative yardage; and another scoreboard blanking.Here's hoping we improve in the next quarter.

Not-so-happy Valley

Posted on September 13, 2007
We ending up "watching" last week's game by hitting "refresh" at several intervals during the reception on the boxscore on my Blackberry. Accordingly, my impressions were mostly just of the statistics. Ones I liked: We scored a few more points this week (albeit 7 on defense)...

First law of weddings and football

Posted on September 06, 2007
That is, as has been noted before, don't schedule weddings on football Saturdays! There's another 40 weekends you could use over the rest of the year, so this ought to be an easy law to adhere to. For my own wedding, we not only avoided any ND weekends, we even managed to schedule it for the bye weekend between the conference championships and the Super Bowl in January (although, given the outcome of the Super Bowl this year, my Chicago-native spouse maybe would rather not have had that next weekend free to watch the game)...

In the lions' den

Posted on September 05, 2007
It's time to look forward to Saturday's game at Penn State, but first Charlie Weis freely admitted that his reaction to the Georgia Tech outing was the same as a lot of fans: "I wanted to vomit." A few other tidbits to take from last week:- In answer to everyone's question of whether he didn't expect that Georgia Tech would bring blitzes throughout the game, this unsettling response: "But all of the blitz zones and the Michaels and the Sam Mikes, they were, unfortunately, they were what we practiced every day unfortunately...