Patterico's Pontifications

12/5/2005

Tim McGarry on Patterico

Filed under: Blogging Matters,Humor — Patterico @ 8:44 pm



Tim McGarry has some opinions about Patterico:

[T]here are times when critics deserve a hearing – and sometimes even heed. Blog potential is often overrated, but experience shows that blogs can serve truth and the public good. This is even true in the case of some of the most vicious and extreme exemplars of the breed. I may detest Little Green Footballs and view Charles Johnson as a dangerous demagogue, but it is nevertheless true that he contributed in significant ways to exposing the fraudulent “memos” at the center of the CBS “Sixty Minutes II” scandal last year. And while Patrick Frey’s blog Patterico’s Pontifications is relentlessly partisan and its tone frequently descends to the emotionally puerile, the criticisms of the Los Angeles Times enunciated there have sometimes hit the mark and produced results.

(I bolded my favorite parts myself.)

Another quote for the rotating testimonials. Thanks, Tim!

UPDATE: I forgot the link when I first posted this. It’s now included.

Weblog Awards: Forget It

Filed under: Awards,Blogging Matters — Patterico @ 7:03 pm



After winning the “Best Marauding Marsupials” award in 2003, and the “Best of the Top 100-250 Blogs” award in 2004, I’m pretty much opting out of stumping for myself in the Weblog Awards this year. (Apparently, Aakash nominated me to be in the Best Law Blog category.)

In the past, my electioneering tended to combine two strategies: accusing my opponents of wearing women’s underwear (a less effective charge when your opponent is a woman); and asking for your vote numerous times. While I rather enjoyed the former tactic, I think that the latter tactic tended to get boring. Plus, I have no interest in trying to convince people that Eugene Volokh or Howard Bashman wear women’s underwear.

Many of the other law blogs kill me in readership. Also, I pretty much figure Howard Bashman runs the best law blog anyway. So it’s a double whammy: 1) I can’t win and 2) I shouldn’t win. Hard to get motivated under these circumstances.

If you like this blog, skip the awards. Just tell a friend or five about the site. That would make me much happier than a vote at the awards.

Christmas Shopping

Filed under: Humor — Angry Clam @ 7:56 am



[Posted by The Angry Clam]

Let me just say this: I love America. No, really, I mean it. I really, really love America.

I mean, you can buy Uranium from the internet.

Check out the other stuff from UnitedNuclear too- it’s all cool as hell.

— The Angry Clam

Ouch

Filed under: Law — Angry Clam @ 6:29 am



[Posted by The Angry Clam]

Imagine, if you will, an attorney who has made numerous appearances before the Supreme Court, arguing various constitutional law claims. She’s also a respected academic, not only the author of one of the major casebooks in her field, but was, not long ago, Dean of the Stanford Law School, quite possibly the finest law school in the nation.

So what do you do? Well, if you’re Kathleen Sullivan, you leave that job to go take a highly-paid position as Los Angeles based firm Quinn Emmanuel’s head of the appellate practice group. Then you fail the California bar exam.

Yes, in an article entitled “Raising the Bar,” the Wall Street Journal reports on Ms. Sullivan’s performance. Here are the important paragraphs:

Kathleen Sullivan is a noted constitutional scholar who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Until recently, she was dean of Stanford Law School. In legal circles, she has been talked about as a potential Democratic nominee for the Supreme Court. But Ms. Sullivan recently became the latest prominent victim of California’s notoriously difficult bar exam. Last month, the state sent out the results of its July test to 8,343 aspiring and already-practicing lawyers. More than half failed — including Ms. Sullivan. Although she is licensed to practice law in New York and Massachusetts, Ms. Sullivan was taking the California exam for the first time after joining a Los Angeles-based firm as an appellate specialist. The California bar exam has created misery for thousands of aspiring and practicing lawyers. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown passed on his second try, while former Gov. Pete Wilson needed four attempts. The recently elected mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio R. Villaraigosa, never did pass the bar after failing four times.

But it’s unusual for the exam to claim a top-notch constitutional lawyer at the peak of her game. “She is a rock star,” says William Urquhart, who last year recruited Ms. Sullivan to join his firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP. “Practically every lawyer in the U.S. knows who Kathleen Sullivan is.” If anyone should have passed, Mr. Urquhart says, it is Ms. Sullivan. “The problem is not with Kathleen Sullivan, it is with the person who drafted the exam or the person who graded it.”

Uh, sure there, buddy.

Anyway, I can think of two possible explanations.

First, since she’s admitted in other jurisdictions, she probably took the attorneys’ exam, which consists of only the essay portions and excludes the MBE multiple choice. That’s usually a big mistake- the attorney’s exam has about a 20% pass rate, some of which I have to assume is due to the lack of multiple choice.

Second, she’s not just a law professor, but a constitutional law professor. If anyone out there has ever read a law review submission by those types before it goes through the editing process (and usually even afterwards), you’ll understand why it is unsurprising that she did not perform well on the essay portion of the bar exam.

In any event, the WSJ notes that her name gets floated as a Democratic nominee for the Supreme Court. We could do worse than someone who was an attorney for Senator McConnell when he was challenging McCain-Feingold (think of the hearings fireworks!), but, seriously, I never, ever want to see the day when a Supreme Court Justice did more poorly on the same exam than I did.

— The Angry Clam

Breaking News: MoveOn.org Dishonest, and Sun Rises Yet Again

Filed under: Scum,War — Patterico @ 6:28 am



Via Michelle Malkin comes this interesting link. The guy caught MoveOn.org photoshopping a photo of British soldiers getting Thanksgiving dinner, to put American-style camouflage pants on one of them (in reality, he had shorts on). This made it look like the soldiers were really American, when in reality they were British. The photo was used in an ad about American soldiers not being home for Thanksgiving.

I went to the MoveOn.org site and saw that they have changed the photo back to the original. Too late to evade the notice of the blogosphere! Wizbang also caught a still of the photoshopped picture, before MoveOn.org airbrushed their deception.

I know: it’s shocking, the idea that MoveOn.org would be dishonest. Still, you have to document it, even if it’s predictable.

UPDATE: Commenter Milhouse notes that the British soldiers would have no particular reason to be eating “Thanksgiving” dinner. I have stricken the word from the post, and thank him for the correction.


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