In case the firms really DO Google you...

Hello, dear Recruiting Coordinators of the legal world. After sifting through a few dozen pages about the poet who wrote "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" (Sir Thomas Gray) and the guy who executive produced the old live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies (Thomas K. Gray), you've finally found the blog of Thomas M. Gray III, AKA Thom Gray, rising 2L at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Unlike many of my peers, who delete their web sites, pictures, and any indication that they have any life outside of class, I am actually quite glad you happened upon my little corner of the intertubes. You'll find my Facebook profile equally unaltered for your discerning eyes.

The reason for this is not that I don't take your interest in my personal background seriously. I am not "fighting the man" with this post, or belittling the necessity of a presentable public image for a lawyer at a major firm. No, the reason I haven't change anything about my blog, my Facebook page, my Myspace, or any other public profile I have on the Internet is simple:

I have nothing to hide, and I want you to see that I have nothing to hide.

I have never been photographed in a compromising position while intoxicated. I have never committed some sophomoric prank leading to property damage. I have never worn a Halloween costume mocking a racial group or national tragedy.

The reason is not because of some sense of conformity or social duty. The reason is because I have actual substantive character and morals. I don't act like a child in a man's body, because I am not in a child's body. I don't act like a fool, because I am not foolish, nor do I desire to be foolish.

I may not still agree with everything I have ever said here; certainly my politics (and, frankly, the depth of my interest in politics) has evolved as my education has progressed. But I am proud of my work, and confident that it portrays me as someone who thinks before he speaks, and who both thinks well and speaks well.

And if you think I'm wrong, well, at least you made that decision with as much unfiltered, uncensored information about me as I could possibly give you.

I appreciate your taking the time to check into me on some level beyond my resume and transcript. I feel that the more you do so, the better the chance you will want to hire me both for next summer and in the long term.

Have a nice day.

Don't Tell My Boss, My Achy Breaky Boss

This morning I woke up to yet another story about racy photos of 15-year-old uberstar Miley Cyrus, this time leaked cell-phone pics that she sent to her ex-boyfriend Nick Jonas. Readers my age will understand Cyrus' plight better if they know that she's Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter and has been his meal ticket since those of us old enough to remember "Achy Breaky Heart" stopped putting money in juke boxes. Younger readers may know Miley better as Hannah Montana, Disney's meal ticket since John Smith copped a feel on Pocahontas, or since parents found the giant hidden penis on the cover of The Little Mermaid and decided they'd rather expose their children to overt sexuality instead of implicit sexuality.

Most of you should recall the giant stink Disney made over some pictures Cyrus did in Vanity Fair in which she was "artistically" nude under a blanket. These new ones are basically your typical "Myspace whore pic" fare. I will not link to them, because unlike Disney, I do not peddle kiddy porn. You can Google them if you're that desperate to see a teenage girl's bra.

Apparently, Disney is already making an equivalent stink over these leaks. I can't help but make two observations:

1. Chances are that when Disney throws out a press release, it will be directed at Cyrus herself. Yet Disney employs and promotes Nick Jonas and his band the Jonas Brothers, too. Where's the outrage at his betrayal of Miley's trust? She could have sent him all the pics she wanted if he knew how to keep something private (or, if the leak was accidental, if he kept better track of his cell phone). Isn't he the one who has created a huge PR quagmire for Disney this time and risked bringing down one of their biggest two-headed monster franchises?

2. Why the hell do girls send these pics to guys anymore? Seriously. They all end up plastered all over the Internet. All. Of. Them. Wanna know why? Look at our role models. Billy Ray Cyrus: peddles his own daughter semi-nude for big cash because he didn't invest his own one-hit wonder money better (for counter-example, see Vanilla Ice). For the younger kids, Nick Jonas. Dude doesn't even comb his hair. How's he supposed to be trusted?

Have a nice day.

Yet another piece of hard-hitting Internet journalism

I wish Hilary Clinton would just drop out of the race already so I can stop feeling sorry for her. I mean I know somebody had to prove that America was not ready for a cutthroat, self-serving, self-important, egomaniacal head case of a woman to be President. But really, couldn't it have been someone who looks less like a wounded puppy?

Anyway, that's not the hard-hitting Internet journalism. No, tonight, what's keeping me up at 1:30 A.M. when I have work in the morning is, stupid Facebook photo trends that just need to die. As you might imagine, it is largely my female friends who have propagated these. So this one's for you, girls.

1. Pictures of huge piles of feet

Why girls take pictures in large groups is no mystery to me: girls are social animals. Why girls get dressed up just to take pictures for Facebook isn't really a mystery, either: girls like to look pretty. But why girls would stand in a circle and touch their feet together, then take a picture...that one is probably somewhere in the DSM-IV, or more likely one of those books the psychiatrists keep on their bookshelves in case something isn't in the DSM-IV. I'm not about to look it up, either.

2. Pictures of girls jumping up in the air at the same time

Are we supposed to think this was spontaneous, that someone with a camera just happened to catch you all in a moment of simultaneous gravity-defying jubilation? Come on. I've seen girls jump. With the notable exception of Candace Parker, it usually doesn't last very long. Conclusion: every picture like this on Facebook represents at least ten takes. Further evidence: most of the "smiles" in these pictures look like grimaces of pain, possibly the early symptoms of several dislocated bones in one's ankle.

3. Pictures of stuff you baked

It pains me to say this, but if there's one thing that my recent foray into cooking has taught me, it's that most girls actually don't know BEANS about cooking. They watched their moms read the Bettie Crocker box, and they read it too. So I'm not especially impressed when they post pictures of something they baked that looks exactly like every other thing that comes out of said box. Call me when you whip the icing yourself, ma'am. And when I say "call me," I don't mean call me so I can take a picture. I mean call me so I can EAT IT. And then marry you promptly if it is tasty.

Have a nice day.

Someone insisted that I write a blog. Well, I'm going to be clearing my brain from my second volley of law school finals for some time. So here's the blog you get, a simple question that I'm not sure I want the answer to:

How would a man receive oral sex from a cow?

Bonus: best cow/oral sex pun receives a fabulous prize to be determined at a later date.

Have a nice day?

Just a thought...

Why exactly does the government jail polygamists, but not men who create multiple mothers? At this point in our history, who is actually the greater social criminal?

Have a nice day.

Moot THIS

Several people have asked how my team did at our Moot Court competition this past weekend. We won. As in, won the whole thing, versus seven other teams of mostly 2Ls and 3Ls. I'm still shocked. Apparently we get some kind of plaque at some point. I have no idea where to put it.

Have a nice day.

-TG

"Get Over It." -Justice Antonin Scalia

If you had the opportunity to learn from one of the nine most influential people in your profession -- in the country, for that matter -- what would be on your mind? Would you pick his brain about his area of expertise? Would you ask him how he got to his current position and what you could do to better yourself? Or would you insult him and rant at him about something he did eight years ago, which can never change and the effects of which are about the expire?

Apparently for some people who are supposedly very smart, the lattermost is the most legitimate answer.

So what got Thom all pissed off this time, you ask?

Friday morning, every 1L at UVA Law got to take a Constitutional Law class with Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. Let me repeat that is case it didn't sink in: we got to learn a Con Law topic from one of the guys who decides what Con Law IS. It wasn't just an opinion lecture or something of that sort, either: we had homework for it, and the lesson (on standing and judicial restraint) was on a topic you would normally learn in a Con Law course.

At the end of the lecture, we had a chance to ask questions. Once again, I cannot stress this enough: there was a Supreme Court Justice standing twenty feet away, and we had a chance to partake of his knowledge.

So I raised my hand, hoping to get to ask about the fundamental difference between secondary sources in Constitutional interpretation and statutory interpretation and why Justice Scalia's philosophy on the two is so disparate (NERD ALERT). Yet I had to watch in amazement as instead, every goddamned hippie idiot in my class addressed one of the nine most respected judges in the entire f***ing world like he was some worthless schoolboy -- or worse, a politician.

"While I admire your constantly overstepping your bounds as a judge..."

"Didn't you once say you were like Clarence Thomas except not an idiot?" (apparently he didn't)

"Why should we care what the Founders said about..."

And then there was one moron who actually had a question written out so he didn't forget to use all the fancy big words that he couldn't remember himself, probably for lack of knowing their definition. Luckily Scalia cut him off before he could bore us all to tears. ("Are you reading that? Come on. 'Primeva?' 'Chimera?'")

But the absolute most amazing one was the guy who stood up and challenged the decision in Bush v. Gore.

You read that right. At one of the ten best law schools in America, some idiot is still so pissed off about an election that happened while he was in high school that he attacked a Supreme Court Justice on it now. In person. During a class. While blatantly misquoting the decision, I might add.

I was frankly embarrassed. It was clear that this moron hadn't even listened to the lecture, let alone formed a cohesive thought or opinion on the topic at hand. It was even more clear that not only was he asking an irrelevant question, but he wasn't even asking it for scholarly or legal reasons: he was exhibiting nothing but the most useless partisan hackery. He was wasting an golden learning opportunity in the name of pointless whining.

I use no hyperbole when I say that I didn't think people that blindly stupid went on to do anything with their lives. And I pull no punches when I say that I am saddened that I will potentially have to work around people so obsessed with their own viewpoints and politics that they can't even approach learning without constant self-reference.

Of course, I could just be pissed off because now I'll never know why Scalia thinks The Federalist is a more legitimate source of legislative/Constitutional intent than Senate and House Committee Reports. Such is the refuge of the statutory interpretation nerd.

Have a nice day.

So much for moving to Montana...

Apparently, like the rest of America, Big Sky Country is Big Whine Country when it comes to lazy, self-important government workers.

From the Billings Gazette:

Computer games removed from DPHHS employee computers

By The Associated Press

HELENA - The state Department of Public Health and Human Services has removed the games from the computers of more than 3,000 employees, after some employees complained that their new computers didn't include the games.

"It sends a clear message that computers are not to be used for non-work activities," department Director Joan Miles said in a newsletter.

The issue arose recently when the Child Support Enforcement Division received new computers, but without the games like solitaire, hearts and minesweeper that come with Microsoft software.

Some employees complained that the games weren't on the new machines while other employees in the department had games, said Lonnie Olson, division administrator.

"I said if they want them, we'll put them on," Olson said, adding that he wanted to make sure all employees in the department are treated the same.

No...if they want to play games on taxpayer dollars, you freaking fire them and see how well they can play computer games on an order prompter at Burger King. And the administrators who magically ended up with computer games should be working the drive-thru window.

Have a nice day.

Enslaved until proven free?

Right now, the Supreme Court is considering a Constitutional challenge to the District of Columbia's outright ban on certain firearms. The lower courts ruled against D.C. and said that the ban violated citizens' right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

So naturally, while SCOTUS considers its case, the District isn't enforcing the ban. I mean, surely a local government that operates in and around our capital city wouldn't flagrantly disobey a court order that precludes them from violating a basic and essential right guaranteed by our most important and most supreme laws. And they certainly wouldn't do it by asking people to submit to "voluntary" searches of their homes for guns while promising "amnesty" for other crimes -- amnesty promised by the police and not binding on actual prosecutors. Right?

Oh government, you never cease to amaze me.

Amaze me, and frighten the living garbage out of me.

Have a nice day.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of the finest science fiction writers of our time, died today at age 90. His works inspired an entire generation to look towards space, spawning sprawling government programs like NASA and the Space Race between the United States and the USSR. But we can forgive him for that because of his literary talent.

He was best known for writing the script for 2001: A Space Odyssey and the short story that inspired it, "The Sentinel." He is arguably credited with inventing the satellite, too, and is the poster child for getting a patent on an invention as quickly as you bloody well can.

RIP, Mr. Clarke.

Have a nice day.

Sometimes, you get the Bear...

Let's assume for a moment that I own a business. Assume it, because you all know I don't, or else I wouldn't be blogging. Anyway, assume I own a business. Assume that for several years -- decades, even -- I've been employing business practices which yield ungodly short-term gains for me, but are, in the long-run, fundamentally certain to ruin me, my business, and everyone who touches me.

Let's say, for instance, that I own a dog-breeding farm, but that I have been buying barren dogs for about ten years now. I know that few if any of them will ever produce puppies, but I buy them because they come cheaper and I can rent them out as guard dogs till they kick the bucket.

Now let's say that practice starts to catch up to me, and to everyone who's been doing what I've been doing: it's been ten years, and all the dogs are old or dying. And because I have no puppies to collect from them, I have no long-term investments, either.

I come to you, and I beg you for help. But instead of, say, helping me re-invest in young bitches that can have puppies, I want you to go to the bank and put a mortgage on your house to get me a loan to buy new guard dogs. You assume all the risks, and I will not change my behavior in a way that will help my business.

What do you do?

You tell me to go to hell in a handbasket, that's what you tell me to do.

Unless you're Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. Then, not only do you go get the loan and assume all the risk for me, but you also promise to pump more money into the market to help all my friends.

Bear Stearns, an investment group which survived both World Wars and the Depression, has recently fallen victim to the so-called subprime mortgage crisis. A lot of people hear that term thrown around, but here's what it really means:

Traditionally, when a bank gives out a loan, it requires security: some thing that it can come take from you to sell to repay the loan if you don't pay the loan and the interest back quickly enough. There are thus two sources of income from loans: interest payments, and the possibility of foreclosing someone's home or property to repay the principal.

At some point, banks figured out that they can make a ton of money by making loans to people who have stuff, but have a bad history of repaying loans (i.e. bad credit). So banks would make loans to these people at extremely high interest rates in order to collect huge sums if they did repay, and would just take the houses, cars, etc. if the person didn't. It was win-win for the banks. But at some point, all the banks and lending companies caught on to this, so there weren't many new customers who had stuff to take. So banks came up with the subprime lending business.

Subprime loans and mortgages are made to very high-risk individuals -- people that the banks candidly know will not repay their debts, are likely the file for bankruptcy, and thus give the banks a reliable source of short-term income when they have to sell all their possessions. The thing is that when someone files for bankruptcy, their creditors can only get what they actually have. So if you loan too much to the person, you will take a lot; and if you make these loans to a lot of people, you will take a huge-arse loss.

As you might imagine, the subprime mortgage crisis has occurred because banks and credit companies started loaning money to as many people as they could possibly get their grubby little fingers on. The "crisis," then, is that exactly what everyone with a penny-sized brain knew would eventually happen to these banks is now happening: they're going freaking broke, and taking the economy with them.

And why is that? Because the money they were loaning out helter-skelter was yours, mine, and Samuel L. Jackson's. If you have money in one of these banks, it's your money they've been throwing down the toilet.

Now, what should happen is that these banks all fail, we have a big economic dip, but we come out of it a little wiser. Actually, that's what should have happened years ago. But the Federal Reserve, by cutting the interest rates on loans frequently to "save" such a crisis, has kept making it easier for banks to make the mess worse by loaning out more money they'll never see again.

And now, one of the biggest and most important investment firms has asked the Federal Reserve (our country's central bank) not only to make it easier for them to continue this boneheaded practice, but to fund it and take the risk that it won't work. And the Fed is doing it.

The Bear, it seems has gotten us this time. To be specific, it has gotten us into...well, the stuff a bear "does" in the woods. I'm scared to death of how far this rabbit hole apparently goes.

Have a nice day.

NEWS FLASH

Hold the presses, everyone. It seems the cutting-edge, innovative newsmakers over at the Minnesota Daily have just broken a shocking story that is sure to shake the foundation of education to its core. Apparently, contrary to their general reputation as altruistic do-gooders, a majority of pre-law and pre-med students are in it for the money.

Who knew that students who are about to take on six-figure debt loads, sleep five hours a night for the rest of their lives, and spend much of their careers explaining patently obvious things to people who don't want to listen, and the rest of their career cleaning up the mess when those people don't listen, might, just might, expect hefty compensation in return?

Who knew that a guy might not want to work for the median salary when all he does all day is meticulously examine people's sweaty, unkempt bodies -- or worse, their deeds and tax returns?

In all seriousness, folks, I absolutely love the law. The problems are endlessly deep, the applications are real and often life-changing for others, and the atmosphere of law school is intellectually exhilarating on an incredible level.

But if I was going to get paid a peasant's salary to do what lawyers actually have to do, I'd have to buck up and get my mental thrills elsewhere. There's a huge and ever-growing class of people who get to sit around studying law, put in a quarter of the academic work law students do, put in a tenth of the career work lawyers do, have a much better-defined career ladder, and get to say whatever they want no matter how out of sync it is with actual law. They're called Political Science professors.

I mean this: if something happens where the kind of law I specialize in stops being lucrative, I will get my Master's and teach high school English and will just practice law pro bono as a community service. The retirement package and health benefits are a heck of a lot better anyway.

Have a nice day.

"Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day"

As you may already know, Georgia is currently trying to annex part of Tennessee in order to steal water from the Tennessee River. In what appears to be a masterful cross between a charitable act and a huge middle finger, Chattanooga recently declared "Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day." Tomorrow, a truckload of bottled water (that's one truckload) will be delivered to Atlanta by Mayor Ron Littlefield's aide Matt Lea. Lea will be wearing a coonskin cap for the occasion.

But by far the best part of this glorious day is the proclamation Mayor Littlefield and the city council issued to commemorate the occasion:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS, it has come to pass that the heavens are shut up and a drought of Biblical proportions has been visited upon the Southern United States, and

WHEREAS, the parched and dry conditions have weighed heavily upon the State of Georgia and sorely afflicted those who inhabit the Great City of Atlanta, and

WHEREAS, the leaders of Georgia have assembled like the Children of Israel in the desert, grumbled among themselves and have begun to cast longing eyes toward the north, coveting their neighbor’s assets, and

WHEREAS, the lack of water has led some misguided souls to seek more potent refreshment or for other reasons has resulted in irrational and outrageous actions seeking to move a long established and peaceful boundary, and

WHEREAS, it is deemed better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and better to offer a cool, wet kiss of friendship rather than face a hot and angry legislator gone mad from thirst, and

WHEREAS, it is feared that if today they come for our river, tomorrow they might come for our Jack Daniels or George Dickel,

NOW THEREFORE, In the interest of brotherly love, peace, friendship, mutual prosperity, citywide self promotion, political grandstanding and all that

I Ron Littlefield, Mayor of the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee,

Do hereby Proclaim that Wednesday, February 27, 2008 shall be known as

“Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

And we'll all be damned if you take our George Dickel.

Have a nice day.

Dude, She's 13

Sarah insists I write more often. So I'm going to piggyback her "trendiest things of 2007" post with one of my own. The trend at issue: rallying around older teenage guys who commit statutory rape as though they're folk heroes.

Case in point: Is Ricky really a sex offender?

When Ricky was 16, he went to a teen club and met a girl named Amanda, who said she was the same age. They hit it off and were eventually having sex. At the time Ricky thought it was a pretty normal high school romance.

Two years later, Ricky is a registered sex offender, and his life is destroyed.

Amanda turned out to be 13. Ricky was arrested, tried as an adult, and pleaded guilty to the charge of lascivious acts with a child, which is a class D felony in Iowa.

So, Sophomore or Junior in high school goes to a club and talks a seventh-grader into having sex with him. Hell yes, he's a sex offender.

The more publicized case last year was Genarlow Wilson, a seventeen-year-old football player who got caught on tape having sex with a semi-conscious girl his age and getting a blowjob (call it what it is, folks) from a fifteen-year-old. Georgia's age of consent is sixteen (I know, I was shocked they had one, too). A jury acquitted Wilson on the rape charge, which isn't all that surprising since he probably played the ever-present "slut card" to claim consent. Six other guys who got caught doing the same thing plead to lesser charges and got five-year prison terms with ten years' probation. Wilson decided to roll the dice, and now he's doing the statutory minimum of ten years in prison.

High-school football star and his buddies invite some underage girls over, get them drunk, have sex with some and get head from others. Again, sex offenders? Yes.

Yet with the kind of media coverage they get, you'd think that these guys were prisoners of the Gestapo. Their parents insist that their little angels were just being teenagers, that they shouldn't be held to an adult standard of any kind.

But when an older person is relating to a younger person, who is supposed to be the adult? We have two alternatives: we either establish a standard of behavior for older teenagers, male and female, with younger teenagers, or we never let teenagers out of our sights. The latter isn't going to happen.

The blunt fact is this: if you're a high school male, and you have sex with a middle-school girl, you have taken advantage of her. I knew more than a few such guys when I was in high school, and I never knew a single situation where the male wasn't using pressure or flat-out coercion to get what he wanted. I certainly never knew anyone who was innocent when they had sex with someone three or four years their junior.

And the one that always kills me is the card Ricky played: "I didn't know she was 13, man!" Twenty-year-old guys play this card a lot with 16 and 17-year-old girls. Frankly, they have a better argument. I've never seen a 13-year-old girl who actually looked or, more importantly, acted like she was 16 or 17, especially not one at a "teen club." If any such girls exist, they're probably at home studying or -- God forbid -- spending time with their parents, who actually give a damn whether they're playing wide receiver for the local quarterback.

Bottom line, folks: these are the worst examples of excuse-making for irresponsible teens and young adults that I've seen. And such stories are getting more and more common. Those of us who believe in moral standards and personal responsibility need to make sure our voices are heard in the discussion. Otherwise, the very legal barriers that protect impressionable younger teens from coercive pressure by older teens may break down altogether, as they've started to in Europe.

Have a nice day.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and just so folks know, I have "moderated comments" turned on. So if your comment doesn't go through right away, that's why.

I haven't been anywhere near this thing since I made that last post. And I left it up because sadly enough, over five years later, I have to admit that I was terribly and unabashedly right. We went into Iraq, thousands of lives were lost, and in 2004 the American people put their stamp of approval on it.

But I don't want to talk about Iraq anymore. Because it's starting to look like Iraq will end up as a footnote to history, a sidebar explanation for why we were so badly underprepared for a real war against a real enemy. We've committed a huge portion of our fighting force to the "liberty" of a third-world country with an obsessive devotion to a totalitarian governmental-religious ideal.

Meanwhile, the man in control of the second-largest nuclear cache in the world is rattling his saber at us every chance he gets, and we're doing our best to pretend he isn't serious. Vladimir Putin is staring at us on the cover of Time's Man of the Year issue, hurling insults about our presidential candidates, and saying he will interpret our shooting down a dead satellite as a "missile test." Meanwhile, we're celebrating the "victory" of re-opening the liquor stores in Baghdad.

It's really, really, frighteningly stupid.

I think Dr. Paul said it best during his campaign when he repeatedly pointed out that, twenty years after "defeating" second-most powerful nation in the world in the arms race without blinking an eye, we're freaking out over a small band of militants who live halfway across the world. That folly will become infinitely more apparent under the next president, who will have to deal with an emboldened Russia and a Chinese economy that has discovered what we have long forgotten: a strong economy is supposed to make stuff.

So between law school readings, that's what I think about. That, and my bunnies. By the way, did you know bunnies will chew holes in your curtains? I didn't. But now I do.

Have a nice day.