I've mentioned before that I'm never having children, right?
I like that the list of materials needed included ribbon. Just because a job is grizzly doesn't mean it can't also be festive.
The police chief in Waycross the Village of the Damned....
I'm sure they're just banding together because there is no safe space for budding serial killers like themselves in this liberal society.
Just because a job is grizzly doesn't mean it can't also be festive.
even the very festive Timothy Treadwell never festooned his bears with ribbons.
"Now I'd like you all to break up into groups and plot together on a way to kill me."
A White Bear would give the top grade to the student who didn't show any of his work or cooperate with his teammates but managed to actually injure her severely.
Bad parenting. It's real.
Yeah, didn't these kids learn to never rat out the group.
"Today's Lesson: How to Find the Carotid Artery."
Thank you, Jesus/Buddha/Everybody, for making me gay. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, alcohol, from preventing me from completing my Education degree. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Yeah, didn't these kids learn to never rat out the group.
Sadly, there's every reason to think that the Shi'a was commenting on just that.
I'm curious as to how these kids got so pissed off.
In addition to the knife ... students had ... a heavy crystal paperweight.
Huh? Well, the kids are only 8-9 years old, so they're bound to make some mistakes.
Note that morality develops with age; kids that young are pretty amoral, and toddlers are fucking sociopaths (Google for moral development in children if you're interested). It's a good thing children are born small and weak.
Heebie, have you never seen movies? Some kids just get the Evil Gene.
may be it was just a practical joke like april fool etc
ot, a religious joke
so, a guy was drifting in the rapids and praying
god save me, god help me, i'll be good etc
there came a branch along his way that he was able to grasp
the guy exclaimed 'who knew that branch will save me, not god' (it's a wordplay: burkhan - god, burgas - branch)
the branch immediately cracks with the guy shouting, 'don't you understand jokes'
Hmm, I don't like the new look so much. But I'll not look a gift faf in the mouth.
Thank you, alcohol, from preventing me from completing my Education degree
I know someone who, burned out on law, left to teach school. When I ran into him yesterday, I learned that he'd left school to work for the Department of Corrections. "At least I can beat control the prisoners," he said.
Toddlers are vicious. They've just figured out that they have a will, and we're all lucky their fine motor skills suck.
I'm curious as to how these kids got so pissed off.
Me too.
19: You can beat the kids, too. You just can't leave traces. Or so I've heard.
The alleged ringleader, Malachi, is still at large in the cornfield.
Am I a terrible cynic for assuming without even bothering to click the link that the return of Fafblog is a cruel April Fool's prank by Fafblog itself?
23: I couldn't make it through that movie. Too scary. Because of the corn, surprisingly.
You can beat the kids, too. You just can't leave traces.
"No Child Left Un-Waterboarded."
I find quinoa a far more intimidating grain.
24: While this is no guarantee, here's a bit from the comments:
Patrick said...
If this is just an April Fools thing I will be very upset with you Fafnir!
Giblets said...
Baheh! Giblets scoffs at your "April Fools!" By the Gibletsian calendar it is the twelfth of Squirchember.
Also, redesigning the site seems excessive for a prank, but then I'm a trusting soul.
Spooky. But does the having of duct tape and a knife, etc, really persuasively signal they would have gone through with it? Still spooky, regardless, but I am skeptical of this plan's potential for eventuating.
Any chance that they'll be tried as adults?
How old are these kids? Eight or nine?
Right, 8 or 9. I can sort of see how it could have seemed like an interesting division of labor kind of game. Maybe they are all complete sociopaths, I don't know, but I don't see this necessarily progressing the way the evidence points.
31: I think that's right. Third grade means, IIRC, seven or eight.
I really don't know what's wrong with you people. Those little cold blooded killers sound *adorable*! I will raise many of my own. My child assassin squadron.
I completely forgot, back during the original "how many five-year-olds" thread, that I witnessed something vaguely like it once in my martial arts class. During a sparring session, one of the tougher black belts, after some two-on-ones, called in three of the younguns, and more started crowding into the ring until there were maybe six total, all 9 or younger.
It quickly became very play-like, though (everyone was laughing), and the black belt was easily able to keep them all at bay.
It's interesting both that they went as far as getting the knife, duct-tape and glass paperweight to school, and that these were their chosen weapons. I wonder where they came up with those. Cluedo? B-movie thrillers?
what kind of 9-year-olds watch B-movie thrillers?
maybe Naruto has a special power where he turns into a crystal paperweight.
I think most mainstream thriller movies involve someone being clocked ont he head with a heavy object during a struggle. It's a good plan in the 8yr old abstract - hit her on the head, tape hand and mouth once she id down, proceed with knifing. But it's too gorey, too much soft tissue involved. They wouldn't have done it, I am convincing myself.
what kind of 9-year-olds watch B-movie thrillers?
The kind that end up conspiring to knock their teacher unconscious, bind him with duct tape and stab him to death?
Reminds me of a low-grade Floridian version of Heavenly Creatures.
38: I think I remember a book with a somewhat similar plot in which the intention was to just kidnap the teacher, but the (high school) kids accidentally killed them. Or maybe that was a movie.
They are in GA. And I realize I had been assuming the teacher as female from the get go. Sexist? Undoubtedly.
Also, I don't get the post title. Vic?
Damn it, I wanted to make the Naruto reference.
Fafblog!
If a few grade school teachers must be ritually sacrificed by their own students in order to bring Fafblog back from the dead, I regard it as a fair exchange.
They wouldn't have done it, I am convincing myself.
By the time I was in jr. high I had gone to school with one kid who successfully murdered one of her parents and a couple of others who made unsuccessful attempts at murder (all resulted in legal consequences; these weren't just big talkers). Sure, third graders are small and obsessed with collectible card games. A mob of them is capable of anything, though, and eleven are more than enough for a mob.
They wouldn't have done it
I think the feedback provided by seeing their teacher hurt would indeed have stopped them, unless the ringleader was abused at home and so inured to the sight of injury. Even then the others wouldn't go forward.
Some of my seven-year-old's zany plans stop when he realizes that he'd have to figure out by himself which metro platform to use, or otherwise would reach an unfamiliar situation. Aside from the generally bratty attitude of modern cartoons, he and his friends don't abstract from TV much.
47: especially if they'd learn to flick collectible cards with deadly accuracy.
49: Laugh all you want, sure, but every time the little darlings watch an animated ninja they learn a new way to kill.
Oh, I forgot the guy who very probably killed and dismembered or helped his mother kill and dismember his father. That was long after we graduated, though.
51: "Eleven third-graders have had their plot to kill a teacher using eyebeams, mystical spells, and adorable creatures which burst forth from eggs foiled by a mysterious wizard."
You know, these kids have it lucky. When I was a kid the only means of murder I could learn were to (a) turn into a car, (b) combine a bunch of cars or lions to form a giant robot or (c) try to frame my enemeies as members of COBRA. What next, these kids can just arrange a hit via the my-spaces?
54: framing your enemies as members of COBRA wouldn't work particularly well, though: the most you could hope for is that they would be shot at totally ineffectively by laser-wielding ingrates.
55: So true, so depressing.
On the other hand, if you're already talking about killing your teacher, who's to say you couldn't be that black sheep who turns into a gun?
47: RMMP, your childhood sounds scarier all the time.
58: P'shaw, it was downright pastoral most of the time.
Pasture's just another name for Veldt.
The plot unraveled over the weekend when a student tipped off police
Probably the one assigned to wipe up the blood.
Probably the one assigned to wipe up the blood.
I'm betting on the one who got caught with a garotte made out of gimp and #2 pencils.
Pasture's just another name for Veldt.
Pasture's just another name for which module to choose
The EEA was good enough for me
Good enough for me and Evo-Psychology
Being ratted out makes the story funny, but the ringleader, and I expect there was one, is likely a very bad seed and has learned a valuable lesson early and relatively cheaply.
and has learned a valuable lesson early and relatively cheaply.
The lesson won't stick if it's cheap. Try him as an adult.
has learned a valuable lesson
Off the likeliest squealer early as a practice run and object lesson?
Trust no one.
Never send eleven third-graders to do a man's job.
70: I'm thinking Reservoir Dogs meets The Little Rascals, maybe even do it as a reverse Bugsy Malone with adults playing the kids, there's a hit film in here somewhere.
Don't pitch yourself, JP. It's unseemly.
71: I'm thinking recursively, so saying what I think is superfluous.
58: P'shaw, it was downright pastoral most of the time.
Reminds me of Alameida complaining once that a teacher told her to tone down the Southern Gothicness of her writing and responding (inwardly alone?) that she thought she had toned it down.
Try him as an adult.
That should be a fun one for the defense bar...
BAILIFF: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth...
WITNESS: Hey! Gross! The previous witness wet his pants on the stand!
[...]
DEFENSE COUNSEL [cross-examining school principal] Have you ever heard schoolchildren singing a ditty to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic?
WITNESS: Yes
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Do you recall the lyrics?
WITNESS: Yes.
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Could you recite them for the court?
WITNESS: I believe it goes, "Glory, glory Halleluja, teacher hit me with the ruler, so I met her at the door with a loaded .44, now she ain't my teacher any more."
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Now, in your recollection, have any of the pupils you have heard singing that ditty actually met their teacher at the door with a firearm of any caliber?
WITNESS: No, but this is...
DEFENSE COUNSEL: [cutting the witness off]I see. So you're saying that children in your school sometimes talk about committing acts of violence even though they have done no such thing?
I believe the line is "now the teacher don't teach no more," counselor.
What happens when the defense counsel finds out that the witness' fingers were crossed during direct? Mistrial, that's what.
This court has reminded counsel time and again that there will be neither crossies nor takebacks in this proceeding.
77: This eventuality is foreseen and precluded by the addition of "and No Backsies!" to the swearing-in oath.
75: When I was in third grade, I wrote like 4 extra verses to the "Glory Glory, kill your teacher" song. The principal had a word with my mother about it. She was nonplussed that I had written something so unoriginal...
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Officer, I refer you to Exhibit H entered into evidence by the prosecution. Can you identify it?
WITNESS: Yes. It is a handwritten note we recovered from the scene.
DEFENSE COUNSEL: And what reason do you have to believe that the note is associated with my client?
WITNESS: Well, it's a typical note written by a 3rd grader. It's on spiral-bound wide-ruled notebook paper, written in block letters, and contains a characteristic "questionnaire format" in which the author wrote "Will you help me kill Teacher? Yes / No. Please check one"
DEFENSE COUNSEL: So you have established with a certain degree of confidence that it originated with a third-grader, some third-grader somewhere.
WITNESS: Yes, but...
DEFENSE COUNSEL: [Cutting off the witness] And have you established the chain of custody for this piece of evidence.
WITNESS: In statements given to the police, we were able to reconstruct that Jimmy passed the note to Ricky Lee, who passed it to Tina, who passed it to Ashley, who stored it in her locker during recess, then subsequently passed it to Conor at lunch time, who passed it to Jacinda, who left it in the secret note box for Caleb.
DEFENSE COUNSEL: [Harshly] Is that typical of the standards of police work you practice?
PROSECUTOR: Objection, your honor!
JUDGE: Please restate your question.
DEFENSE COUNSEL: [Snidely] In your considered opinion as a police professional, were there any opportunities for parties other than the defendant to have tampered with the evidence?
I'm wondering whether this little drama is going go end up L&O or Columbo.
This week on "Law and Order" Detectives Goren and Eames face their toughest perps yet, the Third graders of Center Elementary School.
"She had it coming, she killed Kenny" said spokesman Eric Cartman.
I'm wondering whether this little drama is going go end up L&O or Columbo.
Law & Order: SpEd Victims Unit
It's a good plan in the 8yr old abstract - hit her on the head, tape hand and mouth once she id down, proceed with knifing. But it's too gorey, too much soft tissue involved. They wouldn't have done it, I am convincing myself.
Sure they would, precisely because at that age they're capable of the abstract plan but not yet so good at the empathy. (Which isn't b/c they're amoral; it's b/c they're still developing, duh.) If stuff became gory they'd just get scared and convince each other they had to finish the job lest they get in trouble.
They got this mad/bad just because all kids have these angry "I'll kill you!" impulses. I think the main difference is probably between parents who take the feelings seriously and help the kids talk about them (and explain what the consequences would be, and try to explain empathy, too), vs. parents who think it's cute or funny or cool and don't treat it seriously at all.
But today I am feeling excruciatingly depressed and cynical about adults who don't know what the fuck they're doing where kids are concerned.
B, perhaps you shouldn't extrapolate too much from your own homicidal child.
I think it's cruel to extrapolate from children, they're not really equipped to understand what's going on.
And of course only a monster would run a regression on an innocent child.
It's like extrapolating the candy from the existence of a baby.
"She had it coming, she killed Kenny" said spokesman Eric Cartman.
"Kyle's next," Mr. Cartman continued.
all kids have these angry "I'll kill you!" impulses. I think the main difference is probably between parents who take the feelings seriously and help the kids talk about them (and explain what the consequences would be, and try to explain empathy, too), vs. parents who think it's cute or funny or cool and don't treat it seriously at all.
Mrs. Bitch, would you be available to testify as an expert witness in a legal proceeding? Naturally, there will be an honorarium at your reasonable and customary rates, and your travel and incidental expenses will be compensated.
Now, given that the trial will be held in South Georgia, we need to go over a few particulars for your responses during cross-examination...
all kids have these angry "I'll kill you!" impulses
Not if you get them circumcised, so that they know you mean business.
94: I totally would testify in defense of fucking eight year old children, yes, I would.
96: you're wanted on "To Catch a Predator", in that case. Be warned, there may be boos.
FUCKING EIGHT YEAR OLD CHILDREN IS WRONG, B.
B, I really didn't think you were a supporter of NAMBLA.
96: Or anyone who could verbally consent, for that matter.
In the scramble for the low-hanging fruit, there were cuts and bruises, but no serious injury. Next time, perhaps somebody in the tribe will bring a ladder.
multiple pwnge. I feel shame.
101: Four within a minute or so, is that a record? Previous high I had seen was three. I blame the newer streamlined posting technology, will no Internet records be safe?
The children and I will fuck you people up. We will form a homicidal army.
all kids people have these angry "I'll kill you!" impulses
The children and I will fuck you people up. We will form a homicidal army.
That has so been done before, B.
B is Stephen of Cloyes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade
We will form a homicidal army.
Booooooring. Form a fungicidal army and then we'll talk.
Or a genocidal army of coprophiliac agoraphobes with lasik and phasers.
B and her kid army aren't getting shit done. I guarantee she is absentmindedly teaching them about empathy within hours of organizing and the operation never gets its feet off the ground.
We will form a homicidal army.
If you can do so between blog comments, which was not a problematic distraction for Alexander, Wellington, Grant or Hitler, to name just the commanders discussed in Keegan's The Mask of Command.
Seriously, if eleven third-graders plotted together to kill me and got as far as having chosen their weapons I would the fuck leave town.
which was not a problematic distraction for Alexander, Wellington, Grant or Hitler
Yes, Alexander the Great was well known for being able to write blog comments with one hand and battle orders with the other.
I would the fuck leave town.
Then the third-graders will be emboldened. You have to fight the third-graders there so that we don't have to fight them here.
You know what's funny? Think of some giant flypaper with like third graders stuck all over it.
Yes, Alexander the Great was well known for being able to write blog comments with one hand and battle orders with the other.
Keegan quotes (and, I think, includes an image of) a brief note composed by Wellington at Waterloo, on horseback, giving orders to a subordinate re: the defense of a particular location and making adroit use of (I think) the subjunctive. Kindly, he does not contrast Custer's last, misspelled messages to the Seventh Cavalry.
You know what's funny? Think of some giant flypaper with like third graders stuck all over it.
also: prison rape
Prison rape with third graders stuck all over it is not funny, felix.
Come now, McManlyPants. We are big, strapping men and third graders are scrawny little creatures who can be brought to tears with nothing more than sharp words. As long as the murder weapon isn't a gun, I'm confident I could completely rout a band of third graders using nothing more than a pair of hiking boots.
Keegan quotes (and, I think, includes an image of) a brief note composed by Wellington at Waterloo
Plate 14 in The Mask of Command -- "pencil on asses' skin." Keegan notes "both a future subjunctive and future perfect construction."
all sticky things are funny, Sifu
this is the most basic law of comedy
120: Thank you, sir, madam or dog.
Jarvis Cocker wrote a song about this thread. But then, isn't that always the case?
11: Sadly, there's every reason to think that the Shi'a was commenting on just that.
Shouldn't we be calling Ogged a Shi'i?
Come now, McManlyPants. We are big, strapping men and third graders are scrawny little creatures
No, you are a big, strapping man. I am a big, screaming queen and I don't think my Skechers are up to the task of anything other than running away.
123. Don't forget Oingo boingo- "only a lad"
Gonerill, just letting you know I appreciated 64.
has learned a valuable lesson
Off the likeliest squealer early as a practice run and object lesson?
Or always include a planted agent whose death you can fake when the need arises. But I've said too much.
Or always include a planted agent whose death you can fake when the need arises.
Straight out of Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War!
I guarantee she is absentmindedly teaching them about empathy within hours of organizing and the operation never gets its feet off the ground.
Empathy is really nice until you have to visit your family, at which point the maturity and tolerance gained through years of therapy goes right out the window.
I think the main difference is probably between parents who take the feelings seriously and help the kids talk about them (and explain what the consequences would be, and try to explain empathy, too), vs. parents who think it's cute or funny or cool and don't treat it seriously at all.
I have no need to ask which side of this divide you are on, which is frankly why your descendants are destined to end up as names engraved on the wall of a lavish and wildly sentimental monument to the victims of my children. (by the way, I did have a go at the shouty teacher; apparently she fancies me, according to the mums' grapevine).
by the way, let's all forward this story to Damion and see if it gives him even a little pause for thought.
The genuinely supportive parent takes his kids' murderous fantasies seriously and teaches them effective ways of getting the job done.
to be honest, as any decent biography of Napoleon, Alexander or Attila will tell you, an eight-year-old who is thinking of murdering a single teacher, and organising his killers in units of 30, is lacking in world-historic vision and, while potentially excellent officer material, really shouldn't be expected to really make something of himself.
apparently she fancies me
This is a big help to your kids' educational career.
When the future Genghis Khan, Temujin, was about 14, with the helpf of his full brother Qasar he killed his half-brother Bekter. If he hadn't, Bekter would have been head of the family. A decade or more later almost killed Qasar too.
In Hambis's understated words. "Temujin was not someone who shared."
These were Muslim kids, right?
Mongol -- pagan or shamanist.
There's a book out by M. Biran (possibly a Uighur) about Genghis Khan in the Muslim traditions, where he's an ambivalent figure.
I don't think Genghis Khan was a Muslim. something more like this, according to Wikipedsia.
Keep the teacher happy until all of your kids are through the class.
but these kids in the classroom, obviously.
"Was the terrorism act connected to terrorism?"
"Tough to tell, he wasn't Muslim."
in his times we worshipped Eternal Blue Sky
our family had a long tradition of shamans btw
but i'm not the gifted one, if shamans really possessed healing powers it could so help me in my profession :)
and Temujin killed Bekter because Bekter was an informant for Taichiuds who was betraying his own family, in his time 14 yo orphan of noble blood must have been very bold for just to survive
Crom laughs at your four winds. He laughs from his mountain.
Where is that said, Read? In the Secret History the dying Bekter says something like "We were going to have to fight the Taichiuds, the only question was which would be the leader". That makes it seem like a power struggle. Temujin fought many of his brothers and cousins on the way to clan leadership, and then went beyond the clan to dominate larger and larger groups which were more and more distantly related to him.
and Temujin killed Bekter because Bekter was an informant for Taichiuds who was betraying his own family, in his time 14 yo orphan of noble blood must have been very bold for just to survive
Genghis Khan's propaganda machine, still working after 900 years.
Everything I need to know, I learned from the classic Nintendo game, Genghis Khan. Temujin's successful clan war was supported by keeping enough Food-growers and Masons around, and by successfully isolating Territory #5 quickly after coming to power.
Also, this page purports to have a transcript of the note mentioned in 116.
145: I've been to Apsley House (love what you've done with it, Duke) but don't recall seeing the note at the time.
i think i read that in Gumilev's 'Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe', i do not remember his source of citation
and in people's memory-folklore i guess it is told that way may be, otherwise how one could explain and accept murder of one's half-brother, that bloodthirsty
coz we never started any wars first, we always were forced to fight and take revenge for our ambassadors who always were killed during negotiations first
the term 'ambassador' came for example from our word 'amban said' ircc so after the Mongol wars 'the diplomatic immunity' concept was developed and people learned to not kill foreign negotiators :)
Temujin and Jamukha for example were both working to unite Mongols, Jamukha who is always portrayed Temujin's rival was not his rival for real but a secret collaborator, when he was betrayed by his soldiers and brought to Temujin, his sworn brother, Temujin could not save him from execution, so he had to execute Jamukha but did that with great honor without spilling his blood
his traitors were punished of course to death because treachery is considered the worst of sins among Mongols
well, i'm not historian, but this version is taught to kids in schools now, not during the socialist times
when our history was one big taboo
I have Gumilev's book. I find it frustrating because all of his citations are in Russian. I'll look at it again. His mother was a very famous poet, Anna Akhmatova.
apparently she fancies me, according to the mums' grapevine
I'm curious how you got yourself entwined in this mum's grapevine, but naturally, I wouldn't dream of asking you to betray a confidence.
I hope my boy doesn't end up a convicted felon, needless to say. But frankly, I've gone off all this "perfecting one's parenting" business. I am who I am, which is to say, deeply flawed almost by definition, and though I'm willing to try to be better, what I'm not willing to do is apply the latest "theory" to the everyday practice.
Some of what now passes for politically progressive parenting (always validate their feelings and etc) is just late capitalism's wet dream under another name.
Has anyone else noticed that Mary Catherine is in a mood lately?
Pwned by 152, the bastard. Not that I'm in a mood or anything.
This thread is really, really funny.
I'm just going to validate you all instead of contributing myself, because I'm a late capital wet dream that way.
Everything I need to know, I learned from the classic Nintendo game, Genghis Khan.
Hottttttttttttttttttttt.
149 his father was a famous poet Nikolai Gumilev
i always liked him better and Tsvetaeva than
Akhmatova, she of course is very famous, some poems of her i like but
her poetry is too self-absorbed, decadent but not that much evolved through the years imo
though who i am of course to judge Akhmatova and Pasternak, the least liked russian poets for me
i like Blok, Mayakovsky, Esenin much much better if to name the most famous ones
i think i was really in a mood to comment today :)
i'll be quiet tomorrow
good night, all
I invite one and all to join me in being unimpressed with the newly released Yoo memorandum.
157: A timely reminder of stuff that still matters, that still has power, while we're all wrapped up in the game of 'Hillary or Obama: who's more authentic?' (when there's not much more than an inch or two of difference between the two in terms of actual policy). Yeah, I'll join you.
157: He's an evil son of bitch, but there's not a long one do about that.
158: Opinions differ as to what's at issue.
I'll join too.
Christ, it's been a depressing couple weeks.
Without buying into the idea that there's not an inch of difference between the candidates on policy even a tiny bit: I would hope the press manages to give this more attention than the conference call, strategy memo, or surrogate controversy du jour.
I was thinking, on Yoo, on the question of whether Berkeley should fire him or that would be a violation of academic freedom....academic freedom isn't really the issue, is it? He could expound these crappy theories in a million law review articles for all I care; putting them in a secret memo for the express purpose of giving the president the power to torture people is something else. The question is not whether the ideas he expounds are just too beyond the pale. The question is whether it's appropriate to fire someone for either (1) off the (current) job conduct that's grossly immoral but not criminal and/or (2) because you have very strong reason to believe that they have engaged in very serious criminal conduct, but they have not actually been convicted of anything.
a long one do about that
I have no idea what that could have been. Should have been "much one can do about it."
I have no idea what that could have been.
a lot one could do about it
163: You get me better than I get myself, Apo.
Fuck Yoo.
I look forward to a post from Orin Kerr at Volokh to the effect that the memos really aren't that radical and the argument advanced therein, while perhaps only weakly supported in places, is very much in line with a broad swathe of Fourth Amendment scholarship and jurisprudence.
[not] much one can do about it
Define deviancy up. Spit on the ground when his name is mentioned. Next time you hear some stranger say something about Jeremiah Wright, or Mark Penn, point out that here's a fellow who's done a lot more harm, and is running around loose, insufficiently rejected and denounced.
I think they kept the memos classified because they show the author to be a crappy lawyer. Can a law school really not fire a professor for being a crappy lawyer?
Write a letter to the editor of any major newspaper saying that calling it "harsh interrogation" is no more objective & ideologically neutral than calling it "torture"--if you'd call the same brutality "torture" if done by another government, it's LESS objective.
Sure. What I want to see is a defense of separation of powers analysis that doesn't apply Youngstown. Under constitutional law as it actually exists, and has existed all along, the memo's conclusions concerning Congress' power to regulate the armed forces are frivolous.
After Hamdan, of course, the central conclusion regarding the War Crimes Act falls completely flat. On this, I'll say that Yoo is immoral and incorrect, but not necessarily professionally incompetent. As he is in doing the constitutional analysis. What's his job, anyway?
I think they kept the memos classified because they show the author to be a crappy lawyer.
I suspect it depends on your definition of "crappy lawyer." They wanted to do something, and he let them do it.
I think there is professional consensus that someone who takes an oath to protect and defend and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, & then acts like the President's personal mob lawyer, is a crappy lawyer.
The Iraq war, torture, and so forth is just the latest eruption of America's dark side, like lynching, wiping out the Indians, Jim Crow and segregation, butchering hundreds of thousands in the Phillipines, the war in Vietnam/Cambodia that likely caused millions of civilian deaths, the Red Scare in the 20s, on and on it goes. In none of those cases were the perpetrators within the power elite really punished at all. They all ended their lives in security and comfort. The most you can possibly hope for is that the policy itself is looked back at with disgust maybe 20 years from now.
PGD, each of those things would have been worse but for people actively expressing disgust at the time. Yoo can be treated as a pariah right now. Do your part!
I think there is professional consensus that someone who takes an oath to protect and defend and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, & then acts like the President's personal mob lawyer, is a crappy lawyer.
So you're betting against Gonerill's #165?
Here's what I don't get: why so little discussion of the UCMJ itself? Did the DoD handle the dismantling of that itself, & leave the other laws to the civilians at OLC? Or is there yet another memo?
Next time you hear some stranger say something about Jeremiah Wright, or Mark Penn, point out that here's a fellow who's done a lot more harm
But Jeremiah Wright hates America! And he's black! And angry!
Sorry, feeling bitter today.
174: Seems to me that determining causation on a list like that one is pretty complicated. That said, the Palmer Raids/Red Scares probably are the thing that is most obviously not like the others.
176: no. Well, actually, Kerr might pick this one to demonstrate his fairminded intellectual honesty, but you know--apologists are apologists. But they'll try to claim that the legal conclusions are at least colorable, rather than saying, "hey, he did what Bush wanted him to so that makes it okay."
Do you need to come back for another lunch, B? Because nobody is ever bitter in Davis. We don't fucking allow it.
also, if we want this viewed with universal revulsion a decade or two hence: open the files. Declassify the whole mess, starting in January 2009. Short of prosecution, that's the best disinfectant. I am planning to lobby the Obama campaign vociferously to do this, should this primary ever fucking end.
Seems to me that determining causation on a list like that one is pretty complicated.
Well, obviously, these are big societal movements. But it's not like in the post-Civil Rights era the Strom Thurmonds of the world lost an election, or after the bombing of Cambodia Kissinger ever had to return to being just another professor, and so forth.
Hey, for some much needed comic relief: The War Diaries of Hilary Clinton...classic stuff.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/26/213123/601/105/485014
No, I agree. I was just thinking that almost all of the episodes relate, in some way at least, to racial anxiety. The Red Scare maybe not so much. Or at least not as directly. I wasn't quibbling, in other words. The list just caught my attention.
The Red Scare maybe not so much.
Consistency!
(The Corner, helpfully mixing two kinds of moral panic.)
181: Ideally, but unfortunately tomorrow I am somehow supposed to both drive home *and* write three pieces on deadline (in my defense, I was gonna write them today but the data I need to do so has been pushed back until tomorrow). I'm feeling kind of like a total fuckup right now.
Just because the elite protects its own doesn't mean the rest of us can't do anything. The Argentines went through several decades of dictatorship, torture and disappearances with most of the people responsible evading punishment, so now when ordinary people meet the torturers, the tortures get beaten up and spit at.
If they beat up torturers, surely torture enablers can be too be shunned?
Godwin's Law preemptively acknowledged, but I think there is an interesting precedent in what happened to legal education and the judiciary in Germany and Austria after the Third Reich. Obviously the legal profession was corrupted much more thoroughly under Hitler, and the crimes in which lawyers and judges were complicit were on a completely different scale. What's interesting is that, notwithstanding the enormity of the crimes, the legal profession was never thoroughly purged.
The legal profession was so thoroughly corrupted by Nazi ideology that it was literally impossible to reconstitute it anew. For decades, you still had judges on the bench who had issued decisions enforcing racial purity laws. In one case, the dean of a prominent law faculty had a history of ordering summary executions of bread hoarders as a trial judge.
It took two generations to remove the taint, and one could argue that it still isn't fully gone (a fair amount of Nazi-era statutes and legal precedent, e.g. in labor law, remains in force today).
A similar argument could be made about the longevity of judges in the South who were complicit in acquitals of lynching perpetrators.
Actually, a kind of shaming and shunning campaign might be possible. A list of the bad guys and their verified offenses, notification of neighbors, co workers, and employers, etc.
