On Wednesday, Duke responded to Andrew Giuliani’s lawsuit. Duke claims that they were well within their rights to kick Giuliani off the school’s golf team.

Duke alleges that Giuliani threw an apple in another teammate’s face, injured a teammate, and was verbally abusive to one of the coaches.

Sounds about right.

You can’t believe everything you read in our comment threads, but one commenter on our initial post seems to have known exactly what Giuliani-time meant for Duke golfers:

Apparently, Giuliani threw an apple at another kid’s face who was also on the Duke golf team. The apple caused some damage to the kid’s face. O.D. [Vincent III, the coach of the golf team] is a class guy and has always been fair to everyone on the team. As evidenced by the fact that Giuliani is not back on the team, his ex-teammates don’t really like him at all. Not to mention the fact that he’s not good enough to be on the starting five. From an inside source, Giuliani was a “virus” on the team.

So maybe the kid has a bit of a temper and is a bad golfer? So what? We shouldn’t make fun of him. It’s not like he’s a community organizer or anything. Those are the people we should ridicule.

Duke defends dismissing Giuliani’s son [Charlotte Observer]

Earlier: Andrew Giuliani’s Golf Team Lawsuit: Open Thread

Official announcements haven’t been made yet, but they’re imminent. Two prominent attorneys are about to drop out of the presidential race: former U.S. Attorney and Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, and super-successful trial lawyer John Edwards.

Random factoid: Giuliani and Edwards both attended top law schools, NYU and UNC - Chapel Hill, respectively. These schools are respectively ranked #4 and #36 by U.S. News. [FN1]

But the remaining candidates who happen to be lawyers went to Harvard (Barack Obama and Mitt Romney) and Yale (Hillary Clinton). These two schools, national institutions for many years, are ranked #2 and #1, respectively.

Loyola 2L claims to be “retired” from the blogosphere. But if here were still around, he might wonder aloud: Are American voters “tier-ist”?

P.S. And who cares about these stupid rankings anyway? A number of top law schools may be overrated.

[FN1] And the law school rankings didn’t exist back when Edwards and Giuliani attended.

Update: First, it appears that some of you have misread this post. We doubt that many voters know or care about where a candidate went to law school. We just (1) pointed out a “random factoid,” and (2) suggested that people who are obsessed with law school rankings, like Loyola 2L, might try to read something into this.

Second, from an observant tipster:

“It might be worth noting that according to the exit polls the most influential lawyer yesterday was none of the ones you mentioned.”

“Rather it was T3 graduate Gov. Charlie Crist (Cumberland Law), whose endorsement seemed to boost McCain past Romney while at the same time destroying any hope Rudy had since Rudy had been courting Crist for weeks.”

McCain Wins; Giuliani Set to Drop Out [New York Times]
John Edwards to Quit Presidential Race [AP]
The Most Overrated Law Schools: A Student Perspective [TaxProf Blog]
Which top school do law students think is most overrated in US News? [Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports]

Earlier: One Fewer Lawyer in the Presidential Race

* “T.Owes.” [ESPN]

* Rebates to $500? [CNN]

* AG Mukasey won’t label waterboarding. [MSNBC]

* Sen. McCain wins Florida, Rudy to bow out. [New York Times; Washington Post]

* Federal inquiry into stolen artifacts expands. [New York Times]

* Margaret Truman, only child of President Truman and author of mysteries set at the Supreme Court and the FBI, RIP. [AP]

As a presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani is picking up steam. Meanwhile, his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, is doling out the cash down in Texas.

From the Texas Lawyer:

On July 25, Bracewell & Giuliani joined the growing pack of Texas-based firms raising first- and second-year associate raises.

Houston-based Bracewell — with 391 lawyers in the United States, 306 of those in Texas — will raise first-year associate salaries to $160,000 and second-year associate salaries to $170,000 effective Aug. 1, says Melanie Hillis, a firm spokeswoman. Hillis says the firm, which is offering raises to first- and second-year associates in all seven of its U.S. offices, is still evaluating how to structure raises for third- through eighth-year associates.

Read the full article for an insanely detailed summary of the Texas pay raise action, which treats the subject like a high school history lesson: “On July 18, Houston-based Andrews Kurth…. On July 21, partners in Susman Godfrey….” (And who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand?)

Speaking of Giuliani, we’re obsessed with the Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl music video. We admire and respect Rudy Giuliani, but even we had to laugh at this lyric: “Giuliani girl stop your fussin’ / At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin.”

(Also, the pillow fight at the end is AWESOME. And we love Kucinich Girl.)

Bracewell & Giuliani First- and Second-Years Seeing Green [Texas Lawyer]
Debate ‘08: Obama Girl vs Giuliani Girl [YouTube via BarelyPolitical.com]