The number of people taking the Law School Admission Test is at an unprecedented high, and the recession is a likely reason. But some are questioning whether bad economic times are a sufficient reason to go to law school.
“We assume that the economic downturn is causing more people to think about graduate education, but we have no way to prove that it is,” Wendy Margolis, director of communications for the Law School Admission Council, tells the ABA Journal. She also points out that there are more people in the 20- to 24-year-old age group, and that could also be driving up the numbers.
In September, 60,746 people took the LSAT, a jump of 19.8 percent from the year before. Margolis told theIowa Press-Citizen that the spike in the numbers may be an indication that law school applications will also be higher.
At the University of Iowa College of Law, applications so far this year are up a whopping 53 percent from the same time last year, according to the Press-Citizen. At Drake University Law School, however, applications are on a par with last year.
The blog Most Strongly Supported has additional LSAT information, confirmed by Margolis. The number of test takers in September is the highest in the history of the exam. The fall exam numbers were 60,746 in 2009; 50,721 in 2008; 49,785 in 2007; and 48,171 in 2006.
The blog report led the Wall Street Journal Law Blog to question whether some people are considering law school for the wrong reasons. It quotes a National Jurist essay that says you should not go to law school because: 1) You want to make a lot of money, 2) You are trying to please someone else, and 3) You see law school as a default option.
Says Law Blog: “Don’t get me wrong. Law school is absolutely the right move for people of a certain predilection, namely, those people who really want to practice law for a living. … I’d encourage you to ask yourselves, LSAT-takers, is there anything else you’d rather be? Try that first. Law school will always be there.”
Uh, if you really want to find a job these days, don’t go to law school. Trust me. As a recent graduate and bar passer, let me tell you: there are no jobs. Plus, the law really, really sucks. I wish I followed the advice in the last paragraph of this article. The law sucks. It attracts a certain type of person, and I will leave it at that. I agree with Scalia: get a real job.
Well, when I first read Ed Morrissey’s analysis, I assumed that Beck had gone off the deep end. Ridiculous, I thought. This guy is nuts. He’s politicizing military service? Isn’t this the same thing that liberals were saying under George W. Bush? And then I watched the clip for myself:
And you know, I can’t say I disagree with Beck.
First of all, Beck is spot-on that it is the height of arrogance and betrayal to sue the Navy SEALs for giving a terrorist a fat lip. Liberals: tell me why this is a good thing to do. Please, I want to know. I mean, is it going to take a terrorist strike in one of the cushy neighborhoods members of Congress and their families live in to make them realize the stakes? I hope not.
Now, on to the meat of Beck’s speech. I supported the war in Afghanistan in the beginning, but thought that going into Iraq was a bad idea. However, we went to Iraq, and I supported the troops 100 percent, although the government under Bush didn’t seem to. I was apoplectic when the reports came in that our troops didn’t have sufficient body armor or other supplies. My thought then was: go all in and kill the terrorists, or get the hell out of there.
Well, that’s exactly how I feel now about Afghanistan. Oh, sure, according to unnamed military sources General McChrystal says he’s satisfied with Obama’s decision to send 34,000 additional troops instead of the 70,000 or so he originally requested. But given Obama’s and Congress’s priorities, I’m still not confident that we’re in it to win it. And so, I feel now how I did when Bush was in office: kill the terrorists, or get the troops out of there. No half-assing it. Liberals wanted another Vietnam, and they got one, because the government created it! Happy, you treasonous weasels?
And so, while military service is among the highest callings one can pursue, I don’t think that our troops have the obligation to die in a futile, mismanaged war. So I’m with Beck on this one. I disagree with Ed Morrissey who says:
I’d have a problem with this advice if it was given privately, let alone to millions watching on television. Men and women enlist in the volunteer service to defend America, not to pick and choose which Commander in Chief they follow. They’re professionals who serve with honor regardless of the politics of the day. If they feel as though they’re not getting the support they need, they will know it better than those of us sitting stateside arguing over politics and policy. They will not need us to suggest that they bail out of the military if those are truly the conditions under which they serve.
Fair enough, Ed. But what’s wrong with civil disobedience? It’s a favorite tactic of the left. Why not encourage the military to use it against the left? The military does not get to choose which Commander in Chief they follow, but they have no obligation to die needlessly. If we were actually fighting the war to win it, I would be first in line to castigate Beck. As it stands, something needs to be done to let the liberal defeatists know that they can’t play politics with the military. They are real people, not numbers on a chart. But we all know, those who profess to love humanity–the idea of humanity–in the abstract treat flesh-and-blood people like garbage.
It’s the troops that are dying, not us or the politicians. Think hard: would you want to enlist in the fist place, now that we have a government clearly not committed to victory, not interested in really changing the policies of the hated previous government that they decried as alternately being warmongers or not committed to victory? Now, would you advise a friend or family member to re-enlist? It’s a hard question to answer.
I know, I know: “If a liberal said this during the Bush years, all of you righty wing-nuts would have blown a fuse!” But that presupposes that the left didn’t say vile things to that effect during the Bush years. Asmallsmattering ofsuch sentiment.
Sorry, but the military has been political since at least the Vietnam War. I wonder who started that?
Alright, so twice in two months, I’ve defended Glenn Beck. Flame away.
That’s right! Islamic terrorism is not our enemy! People like Dick Cheney are! Thank God for brave, brave men like Senate hopeful Mike Capuano! Hey, if Nancy Pelosi endorses him, he must be good for the country!
-Mister Person
PS Massachusetts’s other Democratic candidates suck, too.
How crazy is Joe Lieberman? He’s so crazy, he doesn’t want to bankrupt America!
From the Wall Street Journal: Mr. Joe Lieberman is “digging in” against the public option. And why? Why, fiscal considerations, of course! What a right-wing nut!:
[H]is objection is based on fiscal risk: “Once the government creates an insurance company or plan, the government or the taxpayers are liable for any deficit that government plan runs, really without limit,” he says. “With our debt heading over $21 trillion within the next 10 years…we’ve got to start saying no to some things like this.”
Mr. Lieberman wants a bill, just not one that mandates a complete government takeover of the healthcare sector, or one that will push us further down the Bush/Obama road to bankruptcy (and complete ownership by China). What a lunatic nutjob! What a stooge of the insurance companies! He clearly hates all poor people, and wants people to die! Saving money–what a loon! Lock him up, he’s crazy!
Not quite, but as more of the hacked global warming emails are leaked, it becomes more and more apparent that man-made global warming–the true enemy of civilization according to some idiots–may very well be a hoax. A sampling from the Telegraph:
Manipulation of evidence:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:
Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted.
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….
And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”
Fascinating, compromising, and utterly unsurprising. However, I fully expect these to change nothing among the committed Gaia-worshippers in and out of public office. Hardcore environmental nitwits, one-world government pushers, and lefty activists alike will still fervently believe what they want to believe, facts be damned.
To us skeptics, though, who recognize the environmental movement for what it has become–an attempt to crush capitalism and institute socialist utopias around the world–this story is big.
Here’s a follow-up to my post back in October about an inexplicably U.S.-backed resolution circulating in the United Nations which would ban speech that could “defame” religion, i.e., Islam. According to a WPO poll, the majority of 20 questioned countries oppose blasphemy laws, believing in freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Guess which countries are in that minority?:
Of the seven nations where most people agree with that criticism of religion should be prohibited five have overwhelmingly Muslim populations — Egypt (71%), Pakistan (62%), Iraq (57%), Indonesia (49%), and the Palestinian territories (51%). Another two — India (59%) and Nigeria (54%)– have historically been plagued by sectarian violence.
Hah! Now this is a timely article that truly hits home for me:
Faced with limited job options, many young adults are turning to an old standby to weather the recession: moving back in with mom and dad.
Nearly 1 in 7 parents with grown children say they had a “boomerang kid” move back home in the past year, according to a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. In a turnabout in the rite of passage in which a college graduate finds a job and an apartment, many are returning to their parents’ empty nests because of tight finances or as they pursue an advanced degree.
“The journey home for Thanksgiving won’t be quite so far this year for many adults,” said researchers Wendy Wang and Rich Morin, who wrote the report. “Instead of traveling across country or across town, many grown sons or daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall.”
…
“Boomerang kids are a major trend, and they represent a shift in cultural norms,” said David Morrison, president and founder of Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm. “Young adults are the first to feel the brunt of a bad economy and the last to feel the benefits of a recovering economy. So the first way you hedge your bets is to minimize your expenses.”
All those kids that voted for Hopenchange, well, say hi to mom and dad for me!
I mean, words fail me. Just go here and see what I mean. On the unintentional comedy scale, I’d say this rates at least an 11. And I love their links to Daily Kos and The Daily Show. Classic. And yes, I know I”m putting my life at risk with even this mild criticism. Such is life. Can’t wait to see the death-threats and hate-mail.
Interesting article by Slate’s David Feige, warning about the bad law that will be created by Khalid Sheik Mohammed in criminal court in New York, but I can’t say that I agree with his ultimate conclusion:
[I]t’s reasonable to expect that KSM’s lawyers will make all the arguments there are to make: They’ll allege a violation of KSM’s right to a speedy trial, claiming that the years he spent in CIA detention and Gitmo violated this constitutional right. They’ll seek suppression of KSM’s statements, arguing (persuasively) that the torture he endured—sleep deprivation, noise, cold, physical abuse, and, of course, 183 water-boarding sessions—make his statements involuntary. They will insist that everything stemming from those statements must be suppressed, under the Fourth Amendment, as the fruit of the wildly poisonous tree. They will demand the names of operatives and interrogators, using KSM’s right to confront the witnesses against him to box the government into revealing things it would prefer to keep secret—the identities of confidential informants, the locations of secret safe houses, the names of other inmates and detainees who provided information about him, and a thousand other clever things that should make the government squirm. The defense will attack the CIA, FBI, and NSA, demanding information about wiretapping and signal intelligence and sources and methods. They’ll move to dismiss the case because there is simply no venue in the United States in which KSM can get a fair trial.
All of these motions and three dozen more will be either denied or denuded of any significant impact on the disposition of the case. The speedy-trial argument will fail. Important documents will be scrubbed and redacted to the point of unintelligibility or will be ruled irrelevant. The motions to dismiss will all be denied. And though some of KSM’s statements will be suppressed in order to preserve the appearance of impartiality and integrity, plenty of the most damming ones will remain admissible. While condemning in stern language the terrible treatment of KSM and denouncing water-boarding as beneath the high standards of our justice system, the trial judge will nonetheless admit into evidence statements made by KSM in subsequent military tribunals, along with those made to a so-called “clean team” of interrogators, rendering all the suppressed evidence utterly insignificant.
In an idealized view, our judicial system is insulated from the ribald passions of politics. In reality, those passions suffuse the criminal justice system, and no matter how compelling the case for suppressing evidence that would actually effect the trial might be, given the politics at play, there is no judge in the country who will seriously endanger the prosecution. Instead, with the defense motions duly denied, the case will proceed to trial, and then (as no jury in the country is going to acquit KSM) to conviction and a series of appeals. And that’s where the ultimate effect of a vigorous defense of KSM gets really grim.
At each stage of the appellate process, a higher court will countenance the cowardly decisions made by the trial judge, ennobling them with the unfortunate force of precedent. The judicial refusal to consider KSM’s years of quasi-legal military detention as a violation of his right to a speedy trial will erode that already crippled constitutional concept. The denial of the venue motion will raise the bar even higher for defendants looking to escape from damning pretrial publicity. Ever deferential to the trial court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will affirm dozens of decisions that redact and restrict the disclosure of secret documents, prompting the government to be ever more expansive in invoking claims of national security and emboldening other judges to withhold critical evidence from future defendants. Finally, the twisted logic required to disentangle KSM’s initial torture from his subsequent “clean team” statements will provide a blueprint for the government, giving them the prize they’ve been after all this time—a legal way both to torture and to prosecute.
Wait for it:
In the end, KSM will be convicted and America will declare the case a great victory for process, openness, and ordinary criminal procedure. Bringing KSM to trial in New York will still be far better than any of the available alternatives. But the toll his torture and imprisonment has already taken, and the price the bad law his defense will create will exact, will become part of the folly of our post-9/11 madness.
A commenter at Slate illuminates Feige’s point better than I could hope to. Says viretarmis:
If, as the author suggests, much bad law will come of KSM’s trial, don’t blame the courts. Neither the Defendant nor the courts were responsible for his torture, incarceration and delay in prosecution. Look to the former administration, for all the good it will do, if you need a whipping boy. The courts have been tasked with polishing a turd so that it in some way resembles “justice”. It will be a filthy and thankless task.
Forget Obama or Eric Holder: this is all Bush’s fault! Duh!
What’s Norah O’Donnell’s problem, anyway? You’d never see this level of scrutiny directed towards some Obama-worshipping tool in a Che Guevara t-shirt. But against an obviously seventeen-year-old female who dares to be a conservative? Break out the “gotcha!” tactics!
Seconds later I met her [Norah O'Donnell]… One of the many faces of liberal media bias. She asked me my name and then before going on air asked me why I liked Sarah Palin, I repeated what I told the NYT reporter. Norah didn’t seem to like that much. So what did she do? I mean she couldn’t ask me that question on television, heaven forbid her not have a biting response.. I noticed her look down at my shirt then, she turned around blackberry in hand spoke to a man, thumbs tapping the blackberry (I don’t remember if she called or not, she may have. But she was on her blackberry), then jotted down a quick note. Little did I know that note would be used against me. She told us she’d be walking up to us. You know like she just stumbled upon us. The shot began… I kept telling myself answer her question well, don’t freak out. Well, I thought she’d ask me the same question. She asked the man beside me (who by the way is NOT my dad) the same question she had before we went on air. Myself on the other hand, not the same story. She had me read my shirt and then proceeded to ask me “Did you know Sarah Palin supported the bailout” to be 100% honest I was like, are you kidding me? She is trying to use my shirt against me. I was so shocked by the craftiness she had that I was truly stumped. I asked her where she got her fact and she read her little note. Then she asked me what I liked about Sarah, and I talked about the Constitution. Immediately after the interview I said to my dad “Oh man, I have so many great responses now about my shirt” I could have said, well my shirt doesn’t say anything about Sarah Palin supporting the bailout or “Hey Norah, have you read the book? She talks about how during her debate prep she was handed a list of note cards that had questions and ‘non-answers’” Of course they told Sarah Palin to support everything McCain did. Call me crazy but it would have looked pretty bad had Sarah Palin been against something John McCain was against while they were running together. Norah also claims I told her I voted (on her twitter). That is not true. She never asked my age or if I voted. I’m 17 I couldn’t have voted…and I don’t live in an ACORN district so I didn’t have a chance to even register illegally. Making that statement by Norah completely false.
Wow. Again, what media bias?
See, this is why I’m getting sick and tired of political blogging: there is no honest and open debate. And while I absolutely hate to act like this tool and equate every single thing about the other side with evil, stupidity, and hypocrisy there is so much evil, stupidity, and hypocrisy on the part of the left these days that I can’t help but get frustrated. And to make it worse, I think it’s deliberate on the part of the left. They are the very personification of the psychological term known as projection, and they are astoundingly unable to see what’s in front of their noses.
This dovetails with the issue of media bias: the left has such a tenuous grasp on reality, at best, that they really think the media tilts rightward. What? How do you argue with these people? Simple: you can’t, because their preferred tactic is the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Or they try to silence dissent.
So yeah, I’m fed up with the dangerous left that really seems to actually think our country sucks. Well, fuck them. They suck. And please, to my five readers, pardon my filthy, vulgar mouth.
But then, I come a cross a blog like Red, White & Conservative, which makes me realize I have to care because there are people even younger than me who are also going to have to live with the consequences of our profligate government. And I’m not letting RINOs off the hook on that charge, either: they suck too.
So I’ll be blogging still, but maybe not at my typical five-posts-a-day pace. And I’m trying to get some other bloggers to start writing on here, too. So take care, check out Red, White & Conservative, and try to enjoy life. It’s too good to spoil with politics.
