Learning another language is great, in theory. In practice, the only thing I've ever used Spanish for that was useful was to say "Vamonos. Es un libro de cocina."
So it's true what they say about Appalachians.
Are term limits/retirement ages for judges part of everbody's platform? If not letters should be written, no? It's far past time. And you don't even need an amendment for the SCOTUS, right?
3 I'm not imagining a whole lot of support for having President Trump replace even more judges than he already gets to through voluntary retirement and death.
3: That's actually not something I think of as terribly urgent. You don't want a judge who's actually demented, but for someone who's fundamentally mentally intact, I think it's a job you can do fine very very old.
We're holding on to RBG as long as we can!
My mental model of an ancient judge is Jack Weinstein in the EDNY, who turned 80-something while I was working on a trial in front of him back in 2005. Looked like a dying turtle, and was still the smartest person in the room.
He hadn't aged a day since I worked on a case in from of him in 1995.
I don't understand the last sentence of 3.
I tell this story all the time, but I was incredibly junior, and had written a somewhat complicated statistical argument for a senior partner to deliver, supported by a whole slew of demonstrative charts with highlighting and pullouts. And Chip was not the most attentive when I was explaining the argument to him, and not so good with the math. So in the middle of the argument, he completely dries up -- has no idea at all what to say next or what point he's making. Weinstein, who had been apparently asleep, cracked an eyelid, read my demonstrative chart, figured out where the argument was going, and prompted Chip back on track. Amazing guy.
Maybe not a good judge, in the sense of accepting the limits of what he was appropriately allowed to do, but a brilliant guy.
How does a dying turtle look different from a regular turtle (assuming there's no visible wound)?
There was a really old, retired judge in our town. He got drafted him to be the judge for the high school mock trial contest. I don't remember everything he said, but I do remember his longest comments were extremely negative remarks about a girl who wore pants instead of a dress.
It would be great if that girl grew up to be a killer lawyer practicing in the same courtroom, but I think she's a nurse practitioner in some ridiculous place in Minnesota.
11 last: yeah, we got him reversed on an abstention issue. He wasn't crazy, just wrong.
To be fair, the Second Circuit also said I was wrong. But the judge was wronger!
6 et seq: My (underinformed) thinking is basically that the American constitution is intrinsically conservative because (among other things) the turnover of offices is very staggered (House v Senate v President v judges v sub-federal posts). Terms/retirements will increase the turnover of judges. Depending on the president and Senate of the day you'll get bad judges and good, but the effects won't linger so long.
10: AIUI only an act of Congress is needed to change the composition and terms of the Supreme Court.
I think that makes the judiciary small-c conservative but not necessarily large C conservative -- at this point, the most ancient judges aren't systematically further right than the rest of the judiciary. I don't have a strong feeling about whether more turnover would be an improvement -- I'm not strongly opposed to it, but it doesn't strike me as an obvious good idea.
20.2 -- Terms for the Court, I think you're thinking -- ie, starting in October, ending in June -- not the justices. They have lifetime appointments.
Congress can create and otherwise alter the inferior courts, and have made changes from time to time. There's an evergreen effort, for example, to divide the Ninth Circuit. Congress also plays with jurisdiction: I had some Scanwell cases before Congress eliminated district court jurisdiction over federal procurement disputes, send them to the Court of Federal Claims (which has itself had quite a history). And Congress can change the law to be applied in cases, even if they are pending, as we saw in the Native casino case this year and the Iranian central bank case last year or the year before.
ISTR FDR threatening to pack the court by expanding it?
And lifetime appointments for all federal judges?
24. Yes. Except for magistrates, bankruptcy judges, court of federal claims judges, and others that are not serving on Article III courts.
23 Right. The number of Supreme Court justices has varied some over the years, and Congress can shrink or expand it. Just as it can add judgeships to districts, add districts, create new appellate circuits, etc. (As a member of the Idaho bar, I go to the annual meeting when it's in Sun Valley every 3 or 4 years. Idaho federal practitioners, and judges, always give me the stink-eye because while they have 70% higher population than we do, we have (right now) 6 federal judges (including senior judges) to their 3 -- and they only got that third one last year, having only had 2 for a very long time. The consent to magistrate issue [which arises at the outset of federal civil cases] played pretty differently there.)
If Idaho only holds annual events every 3 or 4 years I frankly don't blame Congress for neglecting them.
The problem with lifetime tenure is strategic retirement. I'm not sure that more turnover per se is good, but giving people a significant level of control over their successors is fundamentally undemocratic.
(For similar reasons, gerrymandering in state legislatures bothers me more than federal-level gerrymandering.)
So, it's come out that Cohen arranged a deal for a top Republican donor to pay $1.6 million to keep the woman he impregnated from going to the press. I wonder how many (fertilized) eggs are in the particular basket that the FBI just pulled out of Cohen's office.
Also, it took John Bolton only a couple of weeks to get Scooter Libby pardoned.
Old rich men don't use condoms, apparently. How much of the Republican Party's decline is from syphilis?
8 He's 96 now and according to his wikipedia page still maintains a full docket.
If your docket is full for more than four hours, consult your physician.
The Scooter Libby pardon is pretty fucking outrageous.
THE SCOOTER LIBBY PARDON SHOWS THE PRESIDENT WILL STAND UP FOR JUSTICE FOR FOLKS LIKE YOU AND ME. WELL, FOLKS LIKE ME, ANYWAY.
I just noticed it's Friday the 13th. Which means Scooter Libby is Freddy, I think. Why the fuck does a grown man let people call him Scooter?
Congress makes SCOTUS one member, then changes it back to 9. One weird trick to overturn lifetime appointments!
Summer camps are so expensive where we are that we've determined it's cheaper to buy tickets to Spain, rent a place for a month, and send kids to camp there. We're considering setting up a service for people who want their kids to have native immersion. We're going as soon as school ends in June if you want to join us.
That seems like a good idea, except we've already paid deposits on camps.
Would it be gloating to say that there's a (grant-subsidized) day camp here which is $32/week? Unfortunately it's not available until you're going into 2nd grade, though.
(Which Pokey and Hawaii are. Just saying it's hard for other families.)
Yes. $510/week here for day camp. Sleepaway we found a cheap one that's only $750/week.
I've never considered sleepaway camp, but day camps are about half that here, no grant subsidy.
But $500/week is absurd. Over the course of a month, that's like twice a mortgage payment.
And I bet you don't even get to keep the cabin.
Also, wtf is it with summer camp? Does any other country in the world do stuff like that? Hitler Youth? Young Pioneers? And even that was actually useful, someone had to get the harvest in.
If you check the box "Please excuse my child from any totalitarianism", they just go to the pool for that hour.
47 It's a rite of passage. Also introduction to some American staples like bug juice. I hated it. On the other hand I loved the tween/teen travel camp the YM/YWHA ran. It was like one week local and one week away on field trips. With lots of teenage sex.
Another point in favor of day camps is that I've never heard of a slasher movie set in one. So they're probably safer than sleepaways.
One summer as a kid, I spent a week at a Catholic summer sleepaway camp. It wasn't particularly religious that I recall, but it did have a giant rope swing into a lake, which was fucking awesome.
Maybe if we had more lake swings we could keep him around.
How's the new job, teo?
It's good overall. This is just a crazy time in the session.
You're talking like an operator already.
Seriously, though, I'm enjoying it a lot. I only have a few days left, but this sets me up well for a lot of opportunities in the future.
I picture teo strolling the Brutal halls of power talking knowingly of sessions, committees, minutes and memoranda.
I picture myself, reviewing my punctuation before I post. Then reality comes crashing back.
60 is about right, but my halls are the Deco ones.
You can watch the current floor session here if for some reason you're so inclined. They can be entertaining sometimes.
Girl Scout sleepaway camp was the best. We cooked over fires, did silly crafts, went for hikes, went swimming, sang songs, hunted snipes, tried to guess our counselors' real names. Important life skills, every one of them.
31: My optometrist is *old*. He started life as a physicist but the Department of Defense was going to transfer him somewhere his wife didn't want to move, so he retrained as an optometrist in the late 70's.
I thought he was in his 70's and he seemed fine, but the last time I saw him his hands seemed a little off (I was a little nervous when he checked the pressure), he was typing his prescription (he had always written them by hand) and struggling with the keyboard, and I could see that his secretary was keeping him on track.
I looked on the wall and saw his undergraduate diploma from Cornell. It said he had graduated in 1953. Which would make him 85 or 86!
I have Tim's vision insurance because you got a cash benefit, but next year I'm going to sign up for mine .. narrow network but it includes a legit opthalmology group affiliated with my employer.
I'd also be nervous about the 81 year-old brain surgeon who is still operating.
his undergraduate diploma from Cornell
Safety school.
65: I have a request out to ours to find out if Nia will be too old (12 in June) for the sessions for ages 9-11 and if Selah will be too young (6 in August) for the 6-14 camp that would let them all attend together and give me bilssful solitude. Next year, anyway, they can't stop me!
68: People used to chant that at hockey games.
His Ph.D in Physics was from Hopkins.
It's funnier when I say that because I went to a school where maybe 5% of the class could have gotten into Cornell.
My Dad was Cornell '53. Those guys knew how to party.
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Even the credibility of paintings of foreigners was questionable, for they might not faithfully capture the visitors' facial expressions. As Sheng Ximing, a Yuan dynasty author, once explained, a figure of a foreigner would be considered a quality work only when it captured his expression of "admiration of and obedience to China."|>