Yes, Republicans stand for limited government.

Which is why the current administration is launching the Healthy Marriage Initiative.

Now. Which one of the federal government's enumerated powers does providing counselling to promote marriage fall under? (And if you try to say the Commerce Clause, I counter with Morrison. If VAWA isn't Commerce Clause, this sure ain't.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LAW MONKEY!!!!

--Love, GB and CM.

Dahlia begins . . .

"When I was 3, my brother fed me a rather large quantity of Windex. Being a bonehead, I lapped it up. Later, as I was having my stomach pumped, he got off without punishment, cleverly claiming it was "an accident." The Supreme Court hears argument today on whether it might have actually been smarter for him to have announced he did it on purpose."

I so love this woman!

You can read the rest here.

L&E to the rescue

If you ask me, there is a decent collective action problem argument to be made here.

Our noble profession.

Today's Times reports that Lawyers' Ads Seeking Clients in Ferry Crash.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Dahlia, oh Dahlia.

She is truly the queen of reporting on the Supremes.

In this week's column on oral arguments in Maryland v. Pringle, she cautions us:

"Don't carpool to work with crack dealers, not even the kind with elderly mothers and preschoolers in the back seat."

Read the rest of the column here.

Uh...

A Krispy Kreme spokeswoman had the gall to tell the Times (here) that "Doughnuts 'are a normal part of a healthy, balanced diet.'"

And 25 year olds deserve $145,000 a year at NYC law firms.

This must be part of their litigating strategy for the class action lawsuits trundling their way.

The human power to rationalize is astounding.

Its about time.

Martha Stewart was a scapegoat. Now they're onto something.

Oh grow up, grown ups.

The New York Times ponders whether 20-something workers are "ambitious and eager to learn" on the one hand, or "self-absorbed and presumptuous" on the other. The Washington Post ponders whether 20-something voters, which it describes as "the disaffected young citizens of America," "will set aside their sense of abandonment and apathy and [I kid you not] flash-mob the polls."

Glad to see that two of the best newspapers in the country have put aside boring, insubstantial stereotypes about Gen X and Y in favor of insightful analysis.

For the record, this recent law grad is ambitious, eager to learn, self-absorbed, presumptuous, disaffected, abandoned but not apathetic. And I think this characterizes most folks in our generation. If the Dems would learn to pay attention to the first 6 adjectives, and not use the 7th as a cop-out for not expanding their voting base, this party might get somewhere.

Up yours, evil empire!

When the Yankees go up against the Sox, even the toddlers get impudent.

Unfortunately, the ubiquitously emailed picture of the day has no net location.

Our reason for being.

"The 'bird' is 'an obscene gesture of contempt made by pointing the middle finger upward while keeping the other fingers down.' Merriam-Webster OnLine, at http://www.m-w.com. This gesture is of ancient origin:

"[T]he middle-finger jerk was so popular among the Romans that they even gave a special name to the middle digit, calling it the impudent finger: digitus impudicus. It was also known as the obscene finger, or the infamous finger, and there are a number of references to its use in the writings of classical authors. . . . The middle-finger jerk has survived for over 2,000 years and is still current in many parts of the world, especially the United States." Desmond Morris et al., Gestures 81-82 (1979).

This symbolic gesture has come to mean many things to many people in many contexts, including "displeasure" and "mild annoyance." See Martha Irvine, Is the Middle Finger Losing Its Badness?, AP Online, Feb. 23, 2003, available at 2003 WL 13367718 (reprinted in several newspapers). See also the cover of the September 20, 2003 issue of The Economist magazine [sic], depicting a cactus in a desert panorama giving the gesture because of displeasure with the outcome of the Cancun trade talks." Coggin v Texas (Tex App 3d 2003).