Juggalo Law

Non-Sequiturs: 03.28.13

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* Real Housewives “star” Porsha Williams Stewart found out about her husband, former Pittsburgh QB Kordell Stewart, filing for divorce from the media. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Slash was always elusive. [USA Today]

* An anonymous Twitter account wreaks havoc on UK law students. One Tweet: “#LawTips: edit the Wikipedia page after copying it to avoid plagiarism.” Here’s a pro tip: if you’re copying Wikipedia for law school, you’re doing it wrong. [Legal Cheek]

* How out of control is tuition? At 26 law schools, recent graduates with $160,000 in annual income are STILL eligible for the federal IBR program intended to relieve the debt burden on impoverished students. [Constitutional Daily]

* As our own Juggalo Law pointed out, the NFL engages in some awfully shady sexual orientation profiling. [Sports Law Blog]

* You’d think the Republicans would be all for funding scientific endeavors to prove that rape victims in the animal kingdom “have ways of shutting that down.” [Jezebel]

* UNLV Law Dean Nancy Rapoport takes issue with Professor Derek Muller’s ranking of “Career Baristas” out of law school. If there was one dean who was going to know the statistical angles, it was going to be the one in Las Vegas. [UNLV Law Blog]

* Ever wanted to watch video of the folks from Lawyers, Guns & Money discussing Game of Thrones? Sure you have! And that’s why we invented jumps…

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The Extrajudicial Proclivities Of The NFL And NCAA

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Son, my turn. I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes now lookin’ over this… rap sheet of yours. I just can’t believe it. June ’93, Assault. September ’93, Assault. Grand theft auto, February ’94. Where apparently you defended yourself and had the case thrown out by citing Free Property Rights of Horse and Carriage from 1798. January ’95, impersonating an officer. Mayhem. Theft. Resisting. All overturned. I’m also aware that you’ve been through several foster homes. The state removed you from three because of serious physical abuse. You know, another judge might care, but you hit a cop. You’re going in. Motion to dismiss is denied. Fifty thousand dollar bail.

But you hit a cop. In perhaps the most riveting courtroom scene ever committed to celluloid, the judge with the push broom mustache threatens to derail Will Hunting’s promising career as a midget boxer with those five words. Luckily — and, I don’t think I have to remind any of you — Professor Gerald Lambeau (yes, the Gerald Lambeau) sees promise in the young bobby boxer and gets him out of jail.

Another Boston-area legend saw similar promise in a troubled youth who hit a cop. The legend’s name is Bill Belichick and the troubled youth’s name is Alfonzo Dennard. Just this week, Dennard was found guilty of hitting a cop. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that he has any idea how to solve advanced Fourier Systems.

Instead of continuing this strained Good Will Hunting analogy, let’s talk sports….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: College Sports Edition

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I’m an old smelly sock, and I’m proud. And I think it’s time to stop the nonsense. After two years of almost relentless attacks on socks, a bit of perspective would be nice.

For at least two years, the popular press, bloggers, and a few sensationalist sandals have turned old smelly socks into the new investment banks. We entice bright young students into our stinky clutches. Succubus-like, when we’ve taken the sweat we want from them, we return them to the mean and barren streets to fend for themselves. Barefoot.

The hysteria has masked some important realities and created an environment in which some of the brightest potential lawyers are, largely irrationally, forgoing the possibility of a rich, rewarding and, yes, profitable, career.

I’m an old smelly sock, and I miss all those bright potential lawyers.

Let’s talk sports….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Johnny Football!!!

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“There’s winners and there’s nothing else. I don’t give a sh*t what those pinkos over in Russia say. You want to be a loser you go live in Russia. I’m not a loser. I’m a winner. I’m an American. Who wants to be John Wayne? Who wants to grab a root and hang on? Who wants to get a mean on? Get a mean on son.”– Coach Hisler, Johnny Be Good.

All I could think about last Saturday, while Johnny Manziel was breaking down Alabama’s vaunted defense, was Johnny Be Good. It’s one of the worst movies of all time, and it starred the assistant principal from Breakfast Club as a football coach, the nerd from Breakfast Club as some kind of great football player, and Robert Downey Jr., who wasn’t even in Breakfast Club. The soundtrack had the eponymous Chuck Berry song redone by Judas Priest, and also included a track from Ted Nugent. There are cameos by Jim McMahon and Howard Cosell, and the whole enterprise comes off as an indictment of the 1980s as one wildly implausible football scene piggybacks on another. To be strained would be a slap on the wrist for credulity in some of these scenes. I mean, this film is a trainwreck in every meaningful way.

It’s probably my favorite movie ever.

Let’s talk sports….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Chris Christie Edition

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Chris Christie, that redundant rotundity, has taken a vicious beating this week. The party of personal responsibility has personally held him responsible for Mitt Romney’s defeat. And it’s easy to see why. Instead of traveling to Pennsylvania to stump for Romney, he stayed behind in New Jersey so he could spoon some more with President Obama. What does it profit a man who gains a friendship with Bruce Springsteen, but loses his party the presidential election? Hell if I know.

Loads of people are saying that Christie blew his chance at ever being nominated by the Republicans because of his a-hugging and a-kissing on President Obama. I don’t know about all that. The fact is, Christie has and had about as much a chance at the Republican nomination for president as Rudy 9-11 before him. Just as that lisping vampire couldn’t have won a nationwide nominating process if the excess saliva in his mouth depended on it, so too was Christie doomed. The sort of abrasive politics that Christie practices may have found its level in the New Jersey governorship. And that’s probably okay.

Let’s talk sports….

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The Circus Goes to Washington: Insane Clown Posse Sues the FBI Over Gang Designation

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FOIA requests: how do they work?

As our resident Juggalo columnist mentioned in August, the minions of crazed rednecks who worship at the altar of Violent J and Shaggy2Dope — otherwise known as the Insane Clown Posse — are not at all happy that the FBI has labelled them a gang. To defend their honor, as well as their right to get wasted and throw absurd parties in the middle of nowhere, the Juggalo nation has decided to launch a Faygo attack on the Pentagon sue the FBI.

Looks like these clowns aren’t clowning around….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Más Sandusky

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Ed. note: This new column is about sports and the law. You can read the introductory installment here.

Hardly was I surprised that the Democratic National Convention took up most of my attention last night. I saw it approach from Monday last and should have surely set aside time to write the flowery and horrible introductions that I am known for around these parts. Alas, I did nothing of the sort. I neither plumbed the depths of my own sick psyche nor hit up Mama Juggs for a blast from my past. I couldn’t even be bothered to make up something really dumb to open this column. Consider yourself lucky.

Instead, because of my devotion to and obsession with watching Joe Biden’s hair plugs gently sway, this week’s installment is a lean one. Consider the previous editions the bloated, corpulent Vegas Elvis, and consider the one you’re currently reading as the young, join-the-Army, good-looking dynamo Elvis. Or something.

Let us converse about sports, shall we?

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Graham Spanier Edition

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Ed. note: This new column is about sports and the law. You can read the introductory installment here.

I was an altar boy for several years as a kid. The priest, who smelled of cigarettes, would whisper “book” when he wanted the book, and over time I became a pro at rocking the bells. Seriously good at shaking those bastards.

Let’s talk sports?

On Wednesday, Dr. Graham Spanier and his attorneys went on the offensive. Spanier, you may recall, is the former Penn State president who was fired in the midst of the Sandusky scandal last November. Joe Paterno died, two former colleagues await trial, and the 64-year-old Spanier simply got a pink slip. You would think that since he escaped the far harsher sentence of his compatriots, he would be grateful. Perhaps he would tend to a garden during this, his senescence, and dream about the days when a child rapist didn’t have free reign over the Penn State campus. If gardening isn’t his thing, maybe drinking is. I know it helps me to forget.

But alas, Spanier is in no mood to forget. On Wednesday, Spanier sought out every audiovisual recording device he could find in order to plead his case to the world. Y’see, everyone’s got it absolutely wrong about Graham Spanier.

Here, let him tell you….

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The People v. Cap’n Crunch: Suing Big Food

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So God made Adam and, when Adam didn’t want to sex any of the animals, he made Eve out of a riblet. They eventually got snookered by a snake and evicted from Eden. Yet before Eve and the snake and the eviction, Adam was blessed with the first kind of food labeling ever recorded. There was an oral tradition so, instead of writing his warning down, God simply shouted to Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There was no mention of monosodium glutamate or high fructose corn syrup. No list of ingredients or percentage of fat. There was a simple admonition not to eat from one specific tree, you dumb sonofabitch.

And so our obsession with food has continued unabated, to the point where we as a culture can be said to be consumed by it as much as we consume it. Yesterday, the New York Times published an article outlining how foodie culture has finally hit the big time: it has become the basis for a series of lawsuits by attorneys who previously made their names in the tobacco litigation that made millionaires of quite a few of them.

As a piece of straight reportage, it qualifies as mildly interesting. As a piece of absurdist comedy, it absolutely shines….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Mostly Football Extravaganza

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Ed. note: This new column is about sports and the law. You can read the introductory installment here.

Last night, I was having trouble coming up with something to say in this space that begins the post. I think it’s called an introduction. I called up the only woman who doesn’t screen my calls and asked for her help.

Mama Juggs: Are you in trouble?
Juggs: No, mom. Christ, why would you ask me that? No, I’m finding it difficult to think up a story only tenuously related to sports that I can open my column with.
MJ: I don’t understand a word of what you just said.
J: My column, mom. On Above The Law. You said you’ve been reading it?
MJ: *silence*
J: Whatever. Mom, can you think of a sports-related story that’s mildly funny and has little-to-no point?
MJ: Do you remember how your father used to shoot free throws? God, you’d stand out there for hours rebounding for him. How many did he make in a row?
J: Something over 100. I don’t remember. Mom, that’s not a ripping yarn, you’d have to agree.
MJ: You were too young to remember this, but the way his teams ran defense at Lucky High. Oh God, it was poetry. Every motion had an order, but it was so fluid and graceful. It was intuitive, y’know? Your father was so proud of those boys.
J: This isn’t going anywhere, is it?
MJ: The team that took second at state was great, but it was actually the team after that that your father always claimed was the best he coached. I can still see him walking out onto the court with the boutonnière and he looked so impressive. Just striding onto that court with all the confidence in the world. I’ll have to see if I can find a picture. I know I have one around here. He looked so handsome, your dad did.
J: Didn’t he get kicked out of a lot of games for arguing with refs?

LET’S TALK SPORTS!

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