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:

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