Wednesday, October 20, 2004
I'm slowly easing my way back toward being online alot.. little things like plugging in the speakers and the webcam, and not being able to get the printer to work, and putting a heater in this room, and not doing much else besides read books on kennedy.
Back when I used to blog here a lot, many posts were will baude related.
In that tradition, will and others mention the alabama amicuses. Not amici, amicuses. I think. Multiple amicus briefs anyway. The one, about executing 16 year olds, says about what i would expect alabama to say. I think it actually cuts the other way. The senseless murders by these kids, while horrible, are the kind of dumb shit things teen boys do. Dad wouldn't let me have the truck, so i shot him and stabbed him.
Gee, do I get to use the truck now? These are the sort of behaviors most people grow out of. No that's not it. Most people grow out of -thinking about- these kinds of behaviors. Now, I might agree its ok to kill kids who kill. Usually by the time the case gets that far they in their 30s and no longer killers, so we kill the grownup to punish the kid he once was. I think rehnquist's take is that it's not obvious that the constitution requires such a rule. I am confused as to why the missouri court did not refer to the missouri constitution, but then it's been along time since i've read the lower court opinion (and even longer since i've hung out much with the missouri supreme court; I didn't really meet anybody besides the judge I interned for.)
All this is prolog. The really interesting brief is alabama on ashcroft v (raisch), the pot growing case.
I just gotta guess that troy king, alabama AG, was in his fedsoc chapter in law school. Here we have Alabama making classic state's rights arguments in asituation where nobody can say it's code for racism. Or can they, will they?
The case is about the oakland pot growers coop, busted by the feds.
Volokhian conspirator Barnette, or is it the other guy, is on the case.
I would be remiss in discussing this case without mentioning my friend Peter McWilliams. www.petermcwilliams.com or is it org. Peter was the author of "Aint nobody's business if I do" about drug prohibition generally. It's free online as are his other books, although the one about how to grow pot is gone now. Peter was killed by the feds for growing pot for medical marijuana patients in california. I'm not sure it was these same patients, but the same set of people. His grow was legal in california, passed by voter initiative. He was outspoken about it, very. Peter had cancer and aids when i met him, as well as depression. We smoked a joint together at a gay libertarian function in dc where he had given the keynote speech. Currently, I am not using pot to handle my depression, which is why i'm not handling it - i'm pretty much disabled by depression these days, which is why the blogging is light. I don't advocate pot for those who don't need it - the side effects are severe. But peter needed it, to be able to take his aids meds without puking them back up - that's what he died of, drowned in his own puke, trying to take the meds that were keeping him alive.
As a condition of pretrial probation, he wasn't allowed to have pot. Jail was killing him quicker - he wasn't getting his meds. So the feds killed him. This case is about whether their doing so was unconstitutional.
My father died of cancer after a two year struggle a few years back.
Being a republican, I don't think he would have taken pot if I'd offered - my brother and I discussed it later.
So this is my sad life right now. I sit here and read amicus briefs and they remind me partly of the big exciting themes we studied in law school - this could be the case that narrows or overrules wickard v filburn - but also they remind me of personal tragedies that are too stressful for me to really cope with, so I can't focus well enough to write amicus briefs on my own. I've done some brief writing before, and I'd like to do it again, but I can't seem to do it well enough to get paid to do it, so I have to worry about money. I am looking at a possible warehouse part time thing starting next year sometime, that would, if I could hold the job long enough, let me eat and pay rent and still have time to do a little litigation on the side. That's if things go well. Another path is I try to get on disability, and then do a little volunteer work here and there. For now, I have a thing in the morning so I need to try to get some sleep. I'm guessing sleep won't come easily tonight. Luckily this book on teddy kennedy is dull so that might help.
See, this is why I don't blog here anymore - it's too whiny. But I had a nice laugh out loud moment reading the alabama brief where it makes fun of wickard.
I guess this would be a better blog entry if I had links to those briefs. Maybe i'll add those later; they are of course in the dreaded .pdf format. I've upgraded all the way to a P2 and it still doesn't like .pdf's much so I have to go reboot.
Back when I used to blog here a lot, many posts were will baude related.
In that tradition, will and others mention the alabama amicuses. Not amici, amicuses. I think. Multiple amicus briefs anyway. The one, about executing 16 year olds, says about what i would expect alabama to say. I think it actually cuts the other way. The senseless murders by these kids, while horrible, are the kind of dumb shit things teen boys do. Dad wouldn't let me have the truck, so i shot him and stabbed him.
Gee, do I get to use the truck now? These are the sort of behaviors most people grow out of. No that's not it. Most people grow out of -thinking about- these kinds of behaviors. Now, I might agree its ok to kill kids who kill. Usually by the time the case gets that far they in their 30s and no longer killers, so we kill the grownup to punish the kid he once was. I think rehnquist's take is that it's not obvious that the constitution requires such a rule. I am confused as to why the missouri court did not refer to the missouri constitution, but then it's been along time since i've read the lower court opinion (and even longer since i've hung out much with the missouri supreme court; I didn't really meet anybody besides the judge I interned for.)
All this is prolog. The really interesting brief is alabama on ashcroft v (raisch), the pot growing case.
I just gotta guess that troy king, alabama AG, was in his fedsoc chapter in law school. Here we have Alabama making classic state's rights arguments in asituation where nobody can say it's code for racism. Or can they, will they?
The case is about the oakland pot growers coop, busted by the feds.
Volokhian conspirator Barnette, or is it the other guy, is on the case.
I would be remiss in discussing this case without mentioning my friend Peter McWilliams. www.petermcwilliams.com or is it org. Peter was the author of "Aint nobody's business if I do" about drug prohibition generally. It's free online as are his other books, although the one about how to grow pot is gone now. Peter was killed by the feds for growing pot for medical marijuana patients in california. I'm not sure it was these same patients, but the same set of people. His grow was legal in california, passed by voter initiative. He was outspoken about it, very. Peter had cancer and aids when i met him, as well as depression. We smoked a joint together at a gay libertarian function in dc where he had given the keynote speech. Currently, I am not using pot to handle my depression, which is why i'm not handling it - i'm pretty much disabled by depression these days, which is why the blogging is light. I don't advocate pot for those who don't need it - the side effects are severe. But peter needed it, to be able to take his aids meds without puking them back up - that's what he died of, drowned in his own puke, trying to take the meds that were keeping him alive.
As a condition of pretrial probation, he wasn't allowed to have pot. Jail was killing him quicker - he wasn't getting his meds. So the feds killed him. This case is about whether their doing so was unconstitutional.
My father died of cancer after a two year struggle a few years back.
Being a republican, I don't think he would have taken pot if I'd offered - my brother and I discussed it later.
So this is my sad life right now. I sit here and read amicus briefs and they remind me partly of the big exciting themes we studied in law school - this could be the case that narrows or overrules wickard v filburn - but also they remind me of personal tragedies that are too stressful for me to really cope with, so I can't focus well enough to write amicus briefs on my own. I've done some brief writing before, and I'd like to do it again, but I can't seem to do it well enough to get paid to do it, so I have to worry about money. I am looking at a possible warehouse part time thing starting next year sometime, that would, if I could hold the job long enough, let me eat and pay rent and still have time to do a little litigation on the side. That's if things go well. Another path is I try to get on disability, and then do a little volunteer work here and there. For now, I have a thing in the morning so I need to try to get some sleep. I'm guessing sleep won't come easily tonight. Luckily this book on teddy kennedy is dull so that might help.
See, this is why I don't blog here anymore - it's too whiny. But I had a nice laugh out loud moment reading the alabama brief where it makes fun of wickard.
I guess this would be a better blog entry if I had links to those briefs. Maybe i'll add those later; they are of course in the dreaded .pdf format. I've upgraded all the way to a P2 and it still doesn't like .pdf's much so I have to go reboot.
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