The final grades have been posted in my “Constitutional Criminal Procedure” class.
And?
Or, to put it another way, I have done made the Fourth Amendment my…well, you know what I mean. The streak is still going.
(I’m also running out of awesome, though I do have one more “Star Trek” reference in the pipeline. I may have to resort to posting Plastic Bertrand videos.)
(“20% cooler in 10 seconds flat” explained here. Sort of.)
Last one, folks. This might be of more general interest, for reasons I outline below.
United States v. Aukai is unusual for a couple of reasons:
In Aukai’s case, he made the mistake of trying to get through airport security with a meth pipe in his pocket and meth on his person. Even dumber, he made the mistake of doing this without ID, which meant he was automatically selected for secondary screening. During the secondary screening, Aukai tried to withdraw consent and leave the secured area of the airport: TSA detained him, and eventually discovered the meth pipe and meth.
Aukai challenged his conviction for possession with intent to distribute on the grounds that once he stated he didn’t want to be searched and went to leave the secured area, the TSA had no authority to detain and continue searching him; thus, the meth pipe and meth were products of an “unreasonable” search and seizure and should be excluded as evidence against him.
Here’s the case brief for Chimel v. California. I ruthlessly edited it down to only three pages this time.
Chimel is interesting because it helped to define the limits of a search “incident to arrest”. Mr. Chimel was arrested, at his home, and charged with burglary of a coin shop. After he was arrested, the police searched his entire house (even having his wife move stuff around) without a warrant, and claimed they didn’t need one since their search was incident to a valid arrest.
The Court said, “Nope. Doesn’t work like that. ‘Search incident to arrest’ only covers the person and the area under the person’s immediate control. You want to search someplace other than that? Get a warrant.”
We’re wrapping this class up. Next Monday is the final; there should be one more case brief, too.
Not that Katz. This one was Charles Katz, and he was a gambler who got caught “transmitting wagering information by telephone across state lines in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1084”. The Man had attached a recording device to the outside of the phone booth he was using, and his recorded conversations were used as evidence against him.
Katz said, “Foul!” and the Supreme Court agreed. This is actually an interesting and somewhat surprising case; it serves as a very nice example of the Supreme Court changing its mind in a very public way. The government argued that what they had done was A-OK, because the Court had ruled (in Olmstead v. United States, which I understand comes up in the Ken Burns thing) this this kind of activity didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court came back and said, “Yeah. You know something? We’ve changed our mind. Olmstead is no longer controlling. Too bad. So sad. You lose.”
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about Charles Katz, either before or after his conviction. One of his lawyers on the appeal says he never even met the man.
Anyway, here’s my case brief, for your reading and mocking pleasure.
Posted for your mocking pleasure.
Here’s what 1276 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland looks like today, according to Google Street View:
I’ve mentioned previously that one of the courses I’m taking at St. Ed’s this semester is “Constitutional Criminal Procedure”, in which we’ve (so far) spent a lot of time talking about the Fourth Amendment (not the FORTH amendment, but check this out, kids), probable cause, and such like.
One of the things we have to do for this class is write “case briefs”, which are basically one to two page summaries of a major court decision, detailing what the factual elements were, what the main argument was, how the court voted, summarize the majority opinion and concurring opinions, summarize the dissenting opinion and concurring dissents, and (finally!) give our own opinion about the decision.
Anyway, with things being kind of slow, and me not wanting to let a good opportunity for y’all to mock my writing go to waste, I give you my first case brief for Mapp v. Ohio. What makes this case significant is that the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that the exclusionary rule applied to the states as well as to the federal government. The application of the exclusionary rule at the Federal level was established in the case of Weeks v. United States as far back as 1914, but for some odd reason the court didn’t apply this at the state level. As a matter of fact, in Wolf v. Colorado, a 1949 case, the Supreme Court expressly declined to apply the exclusionary rule to the states: Mapp v. Ohio amounted to a complete reversal of that decision.
Beyond the legal aspect, there’s two other things about this case that I find interesting:
Anyway, there you go. Feel free to mock and criticize in the comments to this post.
For some reason, the university’s Blackboard system has decided I’m not registered for any classes this semester, so I haven’t been able to check the final grades on my last two assignments.
However, overall grades, transcripts, and other administrative trivia are kept on a different system, and my professor has updated that system with the final grade in my “Applications in Business Programming” class (aka “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Building Stuff in Visual Basic 2010, But Were Afraid to Ask”).
And? Well, we’ve got a theme going, let’s stick with it.
(Once again, from the great “Charlie Sheen Quotes As New Yorker Cartoons” site.)
Yeah. that was an A. 4.0 is still alive, baby.
I’ve had some preliminary conversations with my academic advisor. When the time comes (probably March 2012) assuming that I manage to hold things together this fall, I should be able to roll right into grad school without taking the GRE or GMAT. The university offers a night and weekend grad program that ends up with a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems. All I’ll need to roll straight in is a better than 3.2 GPA, and two references from professors at the University. (I already have two professors who have told me, “Any time you need a letter of reference or recommendation for anything, come see me; I will be more than happy to do that for you.”)
We’re getting down to the wire. (But not “The Wire”. Though Stringer Bell’s “there’s games beyond the f—ing game” may have some relevance here.) Two more semesters, four more classes. Next fall is “20th Century, Triumph and Tragedies”. I need three more credit hours of history, and this class is being taught by the same professor who taught “Modern Revolutions”. (That professor is also one of the two professors I’ve mentioned above.) Also on the schedule, as my “elective” (as in, “I need three credit hours of an elective”) is a course called “Constitutional Criminal Procedure”. Quoting from the catalog:
An examination of the United States Supreme Court’s interpretations of the constitutional requirements relating to probable cause, arrest, search and seizure, stop and frisk, the exclusionary rule, the plain view doctrine, electronic surveillance, post custodial interrogation, and confessions.
That should be fun. (Have I mentioned that I’m flirting with the idea of taking the LSAT? I’m not giving a lot of serious thought to going to law school at the moment, but I’m curious to see how I’d do.)
I haven’t heard directly from the professor yet, but I just checked the university website, and the grade for my “Introduction to Literary Studies” class is posted.
How did I do?
(Stolen from “Charlie Sheen Quotes as New Yorker Cartoons” which I commend to your attention.)
Anyway, yes, it appears once again I somehow managed to fall into an A, though I look forward to reading the professor’s comments on my final exam.
In other news, I’ve completed the homework assignment my “Applications in Business Programming” professor gave us before Spring Break. Since the assignment was “get a copy of the textbook”, that wasn’t exactly the nuclear rocket brain surgery.
My “Applications in Business Programming” class had our first meeting last night.
This
Note that it is:
Given that I paid $180 for the textbook for my previous class with this professor, I think this is worthy of praise. Well done, sir!
Slow. Slow. Slow. And WordPress ate the first draft of this post. Argh. “Introduction to Literary Studies” is finished, but “Applications in Business Programming” fires up tonight.
So where were we?
Ken Hoffman in the HouChron on more rodeo food. The chocolate covered pickle makes us gag.
The NYT reports that Julie Taymor and the “Spider-Man” producers are “negotiating”. “Negotiating” in this case apparently means either “work with a newly expanded creative team” or “pack your <stuff> and get out”.
Speaking of art, damn it, art!, Lawrence has brought us happy news for those of you who own iPhones and are fans of Guy Debord, Karen Eliot, Monty Cantsin, and the Karen-headed Smile Monty (see also): there’s an app for that.
By way of Tam, we have learned that the Department of Homeland Security, which is apparently not satisfied with not actually catching terrorists, is going around confiscating Nissan Skylines. The Skyline is a car we were previously unfamiliar with, perhaps because it was never officially imported into the United States. One of Tam’s commenters provided this link to an excellent article about the rise and fall of a Skyline importer in California, which we commend to your attention.
Speaking of commenters, “Bob” (thanks, “Bob”) posted in this thread and provided a link with some new information about our good friend, the spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom. That link, in turn, led us to this one, which also has some good stuff about Sven. We were particularly amused by these two comments from LJWorld staff members:
and:
Sven makes friends everywhere he goes, doesn’t he?
Sorry. I’ve been a little tied up, and there hasn’t been much to write about. Frank Buckles pretty much got covered everywhere in the known universe, and I don’t have terribly much to say about Jane Russell (well, not here anyway).
Part of what’s been tying me up is the “Introduction to Literary Studies” class I’ve been taking. This weekend was crunch time, with revisions to one essay and a second essay due. So for filler purposes, and to let you all laugh at me, I’ve decided to throw up essay two and essay three.
I wanted to post essay two in particular because Andrew “Shut. Down. Everything.” Wimsatt and I were talking about it one recent Sunday afternoon on our way to Momji; I was describing the subject of this essay to Andrew, and he was laughing hysterically as I talked about rotting buffalo and the cry of the whippoorwill. I don’t think the story is all that amusing, but reasonable people can differ…
Here’s essay three. I doubt that Andrew will find it quite as funny as the other one, but you never know.
Orwell’s 1984 and the “Elephant” In the Room.
Both of these have been graded, so do your worst in the comments. And remember, St. Edward’s uses TurnItIn; plagiarists will be caught.
Who says school is useless?
One of the things I picked up last semester in my Modern Revolutions class (this specifically comes from James DeFronzo’s Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements
I’d welcome thoughts and responses in the comments below.
Edited to add: I think this post from Megan McArdle (obligatory: my favorite CNE) has some bearing here, too. Especially this part:
Edited to add 2: One thing that I should have mentioned, but forgot to, is that I’m not 100% sure DeFronzo’s criteria are sufficient for a successful revolution. In particular, I think DeFronzo and other revolutionary theorists underplay the role of a charismatic leader in the success of a revolution: Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khomeini…
Edited to add 3: The Scalz doesn’t have much to say, but many of his commenters in this thread do.