The February bar pass rate scores are out, and UM's are lower than they were in the summer. But I still hold to what I said last time: Bar Pass Rates are Over-Rated As A Measure of Law School Quality.
(And, I might add, they are meaningless at schools which discourage graduates from taking the bar unless the school is confident they will pass. You know who you are.)
Is it possible to look at this little clip recorded earlier today and imagine John McCain as President?
“Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”???
And his poll numbers were already bad.
“Most people are under-reacting” to the latest Bush scandals.
That's what Jonathan Chait (& The Carpetbagger Report) say. And indeed, people are awfully calm about this stuff. The question is why.
So which is it: Is this seeming calm
(a) A classic case of boiled frog;
(b) A recognition that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is still 641 days away;
(c) Because we trust Congress to staunch the wounds now;
(d) A media illusion; or,
(e) Real, because it's not really such a big deal?
Or is there an (f) I'm overlooking?
Unsurprisingly, the University is trumpeting (via its emailed newsletter) this new study — warming oceans may make more and nastier hurricanes, but also contributes to phenomena which weaken them (and tends to send them elsewhere — well south-east of us).
A change in the wind: global warming, wind shear, and future hurricane activity Climate model simulations for the 21st century indicate a robust increase in wind shear in the tropical Atlantic due to global warming, which may inhibit hurricane development and intensification. Historically, increased wind shear has been associated with reduced hurricane activity and intensity. This new finding is reported in a study by scientists at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, N.J., and appears in the April 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
While other studies have linked global warming to an increase in hurricane intensity, this study is the first to identify changes in wind shear that could counteract these effects.
This little item tucked at the end of a column in Sunday's Herald certainly has people talking,
LEGAL MOVE?
The University of Miami is considering moving its School of Law — from the Coral Gables campus to downtown Miami.
Law school Dean Dennis O. Lynch says developers approached UM. “It's at the earliest stage of conversation,” Lynch says. But, he acknowledges, “we are crammed.” The law school, founded in 1928, has 1,333 students and 173 faculty and employees — 69 full time, 104 part time. UM has plans for a five-story building adjacent to the law school, with the law school taking four floors, but no groundbreaking is set.
It's possible to imagine how a big modern building downtown near the courthouse might be fancy enough to justify moving off our beautiful campus in Coral Gables, but I think it would be prohibitively expensive.
The problem is not just that it would have be enough bigger than what we have to justify the move, plus have enormous parking, but that since this sort of a location would be cut off from both the Coral Gables campus and the med school, we'd need even more space to replicate many of the campus amenities we'd be losing (like the courtyard which is our social and faculty/student center, access to the gym, the campus dining area, on-campus child care). And I wonder what it would do to student and even faculty recruiting. This student has a pretty negative reaction, and as things stand I can't blame him.
The faculty only heard about this on Thursday, and it was presented much as reported in the Herald — an idea to study. It's good that people are thinking outside of the box about how to improve the law school. And it's good to think big. My first impression, though, is that unless there's a ton more money out there to pay for this than I suspect, then this isn't the right side of the box. And even then, I bet you could do a lot more for the school, for half the price, in other ways.
I especially admire whatever developer first floated the idea — it's always smart to try to create a client. I wonder if instead of moving the school, maybe a downtown annex would make some sense — although, again, big issues would be parking and night time security. I certainly expect, though, that before we even decide if we want to move anywhere we will do some zero-based planning about what we would want to gain from a new facility.
It would be tragic to do this wrong, and very hard and, I expect, real expensive to do it right, which is why I have to suspect UM President Donna Shalala will be too smart to try to make it happen once the numbers are toted up.
We knew that Justice Dept. higher-ups, yes under Ashcroft too, were giving ridiculous preferences to right-wingers for the Honors Program (the entry-level way into great jobs at the Justice Dept.). That was pretty bad.
But I at least had no idea as to just how bad things were at DoJ until I read this account of the overt, systematic, and successful effort to blackball all Democrats from the top entry-level civil service jobs at DoJ. (Text of the whistle-blowing letter to Congress, via the Politico of all places.)
Recent Bluessky Posts
Jotwell Blenderlaw