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Let the games begin …

2 September 2009

2009-09-02 American Football

A lot being said about college athletics over the last few days:

Rich Rod accused of overpracticing his student athletes at the University of Michigan in violation of NCAA rules.
Student athlete and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow admitting to the New York Times that he’s taking one one-credit class – senior seminar – this fall and it’s once-a-week meeting time conflicts with football practice.
Ten of 12 Southeastern Conference schools seeing larger percentage increases in their athletics budgets than in their instructional budgets over the most recent four years for which data are available, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Let the games begin … Oh? They already have!

A parody

1 September 2009

First read this: “A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like.” Then read this parody: “Science Workshop: Building a Lifelong Love of a “Boring” Subject.” While I disagree with the parodist’s point, I can’t help but admire the parody.

From the real article:

The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on.

Children are not going to become lifelong readers if they do not like or understand the books they are reading. I remember reading Lord of the Flies, part of the accepted literary canon of my era, in middle school and being thoroughly bored by it. The lessons about power, government and mankind’s natural state completely escaped me. Luckily, I persevered in my reading and ultimately rediscovered Lord of the Flies as a college student and today believe it to be a masterpiece.

Too many children, I fear, will not persevere as I did if exposed exclusively to the literary canon. The reading workshop seems like a reasonable approach to promoting lifelong reading.

To be fair … And you know how I hate to be fair …

31 August 2009

2009-08-31 Washington and Lee University

… Washington and Lee University’s School of Law has two truly spectacular public service law programs worthy of recognition:

Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse. Instead of helping lawyers try to get death penalty sentences set aside after a case has been handled poorly at the trial court level, which is what most law school programs do, VC3 actually helps lawyers in the midst of death penalty proceedings. VC3 deserves some credit for Virginia’s low death penalty imposition rate.

Black Lung Legal Clinic. When I was a student, I learned that one of the most challenging cases to make was for federal black lung benefits, even if the person were dying or had died from pneumoconiosis. Washington and Lee law school students have been assisting coal miners and their survivors bring such claims for years and are five times more successful than average.

It’s easy to poke fun at all the rich kids who go to Washington and Lee University, but they did admit a poor kid like me, and some of those rich kids did learn a thing or two about real public service from these fine programs.

Only at Washington and Lee University

27 August 2009

… would a faculty member proudly proclaim his commitment to pro bono work because …

he’s assisting the poor at his local legal aid office
he’s representing children as part of a CASA program
he’s working with a death penalty innocence project

… no, he’s handling appeals as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. He says: “This appointment enables me to direct my commitment to pro bono work toward public/government service at a time when the District is in need of help.”

Unless things have changed dramatically since I worked for the federal court system, the only things surer than the Fourth Circuit’s affirmance of a criminal conviction or sentence (unless the judge did something crazy like depart downward from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines) are … death and taxes.

Making a federal case out of it: Double jeopardy

27 August 2009

I never expected to find myself rising to the defense of former Comar Chief Technical Officer Martin Bowling, who stands convicted of stealing and misusing people’s credit card numbers and who has been implicated in a scheme to misuse Workforce West Virginia grant funds. But someone needs to stand up for the Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause bars someone from twice being tried for the same crime. Mr. Bowling pleaded guilty in Kanawha County Circuit Court to the credit-card-related charges and ultimately received a suspended sentence and home confinement – possibly not the sentence that should have been imposed, but his sentence nonetheless.

Now the U.S. Attorney’s Office is prosecuting Mr. Bowling yet again for the credit card offenses. This time Mr. Bowling, who pleaded guilty AGAIN yesterday before U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver, will receive a minimum mandatory sentence of two years for the same crimes for which he received a suspended sentence and home confinement in state court.

How can that be? Technically, the Double Jeopardy Clause is not implicated for crimes that are violations of both federal and state laws. The theory is that the separate federal and state sovereigns have separate interests, and both should have the right to punish someone for the same crime.

Recognizing the potential unfairness of dual and successive prosecutions, the federal Petite Policy requires approval from the appropriate Assistant Attorney General and satisfaction of three prerequisites before a successive prosecution may be launched: (1) the matter must involve a substantial federal interest; (2) the prior prosecution must have left that interest demonstrably unvindicated; and (3) the government must believe that the defendant’s conduct constitutes a federal offense, and that the admissible evidence probably will be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction by an unbiased trier of fact. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charleston apparently went through this process before initiating a separate prosecution against Mr. Bowling.

Successive state and federal prosecutions may be permissible legally, but that doesn’t make them right.

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, “the law is a ass — a idiot.”

- Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Let the games begin …

A parody

To be fair … And you know how I hate to be fair …

Only at Washington and Lee University

Making a federal case out of it: Double jeopardy

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