Compassionate Conservative

From Crooks and Liars:

'I think Katrina has worn its welcome.- I think the American people are tired of it.'

- Bay Buchanan on CNN's Situation Room 4:30pm ET

How a Bill Becomes a Law (rev. ed.)

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in The Huffington Post (emphasis added):

As the Washington Post reported last month, as the Republican budget bill struggled to make its way through Congress at the end of last year and beginning of this year (the bill cuts critical programs such as student loans and Medicaid funding), the House and Senate passed different versions of it. House Republicans did not want to make Republicans in marginal districts vote on the bill again, so they simply certified that the Senate bill was the same as the House bill and sent it to the President. The President, despite warnings that the bill did not represent the consensus of the House and Senate, simply shrugged and signed the bill anyway. Now, the Administration is implementing it as though it was the law of the land....

So, I am going to court. With many of my Democratic Colleagues (list appended at the bottom of this diary), I plan to file suit tomorrow in federal district court in Detroit against the President, members of the Cabinet and other federal officers seeking to have a simple truth confirmed: a bill not passed by the House and Senate is not a law, even if the President signs it. As such, the Budget bill cannot be treated as the law of the land.

As many of you know, I have become increasingly alarmed at the erosion of our constitutional form of government. Whether through the Patriot Act, the President's Secret Domestic Spying program, or election irregularities and disenfranchisement, our fundamental freedoms are being taken away. Nothing to me is more stark than this, however. If a President does not need one House of Congress to pass a law, what's next?

An anonymous tip

This from a library colleague: "Of course, I heard that President Bush has decided to address the bird flu problem by bombing the Canary Islands . . ."

Send your brain on a spa day

Gee, the lousy job market, bad economy, Iraq War, instable Afghan situation, looming problems with Iran, gasoline prices, rape of the environment, lack of appreciation of Republican administration, or WHATEVER got you down, bunky?

Do what OOTJ does; Send your brain on a spa day!

Try some relaxation techniques. Here are some helpful websites:

The Meditation Station
A list of 108 different ways to explore meditation, from the Meditation Society of America link here.

ABC of Yoga
Meditation is one of the Five Principles of Yoga. This page is a nice introduction to two general types of meditation, concentrative meditation and mindful meditation. Fortunately for klutzes like me, you don't have to do a full lotus to meditate! See the link here.

Sacred Space
A Christian prayer site run by Irish Jesuits, with a wide variety of languages, meditations for the day and season, and prayer for peace. Very nice site if you are more comfortable in a Christian setting. link here.

Unity
Seems to be a Protestant Christian site from Missouri. A nice site, but I am wary of getting involved with church groups I know nothing about. link here, with a caveat.


Islam
I am not finding sites about meditation per se in Islamic prayer, but I presume it is a part of prayer life, since they use prayer beads and ritualized prayer forms, which, in the Roman Catholic prayer life I know results in a form of meditation. If I am wrong, I humbly beg to be educated. Here are some websites about prayer in Islam:

About Islam
link

Muslim at Prayer
link

Salah/Salat/Namaz/Prayer According to Islam
link
Perhaps if I understood the Arabic words, I would understand the differing types of prayer refer to meditation.

Jewish Prayer and Meditation - Wikipedia Siddur
link

There are a lot of other websites out there which claim to be about Jewish prayer traditions (and may truly be so), but are written for Protestants or African Americans with interests in learning about Jewish traditions for alternative reasons. Be careful if you Google this. There are strange sites out there.

Finally, the simplest of meditation techniques, which is certainly covered in the meditation link first above, is visualization. I really like this. Visualize someplace else, someplace you would really like to be, under the sea, or flying above the hills, or walking in the woods or a park or beach. It can be anywhere! You just have to give it a lot of detail. Take your mind for a vacation.

And now, a message from Sen. Robert Byrd

From the Congressional Record (April 24, 2006):

Yes, there have been many efforts to modernize the Senate in order to meet new challenges. Able leaders have demonstrated courage and skill in forging alliances and building friendships to pass legislation. I did that when I was leader of the Senate. I forged alliances with such and such a Senator. I forged an alliance. Despite more than two centuries of pressure to change and "modernize''--let's put quotation marks around that word, `"modernize''--despite more than two centuries of pressures to change and "modernize,'' the Senate, as an institution, remains remarkably similar to the body created at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It retains all of its original powers, including providing advice and consent--yes. You said it. You better read that again in the Constitution. It retains all of its original powers, including providing advice and consent to Presidents on nominations and on treaties, serving as a court of impeachment--you better believe it, Mr. President. The Senate can send you home. You better believe that.

Hat tip to Salon.

National Archives Audit Finds Many Reclassifications of Documents Were 'Inappropriate'

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

More than 25,000 documents have been secretly removed from the shelves of the National Archives and Records Administration for reclassification since 1995 at the request of government agencies, and in at least a third of those cases, the removals were unwarranted, according to an internal audit released by the archives on Wednesday.

"A stunning, large percentage of the documents examined were wrongly reclassified," Allen Weinstein, who has been the archives' director since last year, said at a news conference here. The audit found that 24 percent of the removals were "clearly inappropriate" and that 12 percent more were questionable.

Researchers were stunned by the scope of the removals, since they had previously been told by archives' officials that only about 9,500 documents were removed....

As a result of the findings, the National Archives and several other government agencies have agreed, in principle, to create a National Declassification Initiative to "address policies, procedures, structure, and resources needed to create a more reliable executive-branch-wide declassification program," according to a report on the audit. In the meantime, the archives issued "interim guidelines for re-review of previously classified records" that seek to add transparency and accountability to the process.

According to the audit, a variety of federal organizations have removed documents from public access in the past decade, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. Air Force. Documents have also been removed from public access at the Bush, Eisenhower, and Kennedy Presidential Libraries.

The involvement of presidential libraries, which are themselves operated by the National Archives, was also news to some academic researchers....

In at least one instance, CIA agents had removed completely innocuous documents simply to mask which information the agency actually sought to pull back.

The strategy drew the particular ire of archives' officials. "That practice, which undermined the National Archives' basic mission to preserve the authenticity of files under our stewardship, must never be repeated," Mr. Weinstein said.

Take a look at the Iraq War from the other side

I have mentioned this award-winning blog before, I am pretty sure. It is written anonymously under the pseudonym "Riverbend" from inside war-torn Baghdad by a young woman. The reader sees an Iraq where Riverbend's grandmother can fear death, because she was born under foreign occupation, but never dreamed she might die under the same circumstances. Turns the whole situation into a different problem. You find out about the raids by "Iraqi government soldiers," the problems of intermittent power (still!), and all sorts of other disadvantages of living in Baghdad under American/British occupation.

Take a look at Baghdad Burning now that it has not only won a Bloggie as the best Middle-East blog, but, as a non-fiction book, is also on the short list for Samuel Johnson Prize, a British prize for nonfiction writing. News link

Samuel Johnson Informational site link

Samuel Johnson Longlist for 2006 -- BBC link

Evan Schaeffer, Friend of Law Libraries

From Evan's The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog:

So You Can't Think of a Reason Why Law Libraries Are Useful?

Though I'm a big fan of law libraries, my last post on the topic only urged readers to browse the stacks: "Need Trial Practice Tips? Browse the Stacks of Your Local Law Library." Good advice, but now I realize I was selling law libraries short. There are many more reasons why your local law library can be useful to you. You'll find them all in "More on the Joys of Law Libraries," a guest post at My Shingle by Mary Whisner, the assistant librarian for reference services at the Gallagher Law Library of the University of Washington School of Law.

Whisner's article expands on the following eight features of law libraries, seven more than I noted: librarians, books, databases, audiovisual materials, space, networking, services at a distance, and training.

Since I only noted "books," I stand corrected. Make sure to take a look at Whisner's excellent post.

Some non-law gems

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite non-law websites. I used to give the students in my advanced legal research class a long non-law worksheet, but they are so tired by that last class, that I have really cut it back. It's too bad because they miss seeing some cool things, like these:

Quotations, Encyclopedias and more:
Now you can get them online, but there are a plethora of great books for this as well. But since this is a blog, I will send you to

Bartleby.com link

Bartleby's has quotation books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, factbooks, stylebooks, and more. They also have sections with full text of entire books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, all out of copyright. Very nice search engine, but you do have to select where to search.

Also, see,

Reference Desk.com link

This is a very fun site, but it has so much on it that you can get lost. They also have links to quotation books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, stylebooks, almanacs, and lots, lots more. These are located on the right-hand margin, near the bottom of the page, in a blue box. There are lots of other links as well -- statistics, feature sites, picture sites, maps, news, sports and business sites.

Business list from RefDesk link

Hoovers link

Alas! This now requires a subscription.

They have links to helpful government information like

Statistical Abstracts link

and the Occupational Handbook link.

and lots of interesting things like lots of health sites and information lately on gas prices. There are always links just for fun, too, word of the day, this day in history, and humor columns. Part of the confusion of the RefDesk site is that they list some things multiple times, so it makes them easier to find for some folks but it also makes a cluttered page.

Law Majors for Undergraduates?

From Nelson Tebbe at PrawfsBlawg:

Law Majors for Undergraduates?
Today’s WSJ reports that a consortium of college and university professors is urging college presidents to add an undergraduate major in law. Advocates of the idea are careful to say that they propose only to teach law as a liberal arts subject, not to train professionals. They argue that the non-professional study of law and society ought to have a place in the wider academy, not only in the classroom but also in scholarship. Opponents counter that studying law in colleges is not necessary because interdisciplinary approaches to law have already found a home in law schools, which are increasingly hiring scholars who hold doctorates in other fields. Austin Sarat, a professor at Amherst College, thinks the undergraduate study of law is inevitable: "It's not a question of whether, but when," he is quoted as saying. "After all, law is too important to be left to the lawyers."