yesterday a woman sat on her stoop in NE dc, watching her six-year-old daughter cross the street. the girl was not in a crosswalk.

the girl was killed by a hit and run driver. the mother told the washington post:

“My baby is gone,” said Crysta’s mother, Christina Spencer. It happened, she said, “because somebody had to do a hit and run.”

Spencer said she was watching from the stoop of the family home on Sixth Street as her daughter tried to cross.

at 35, i still have difficulty jaywalking, even if there isn’t a car in sight. why? because when i was a preschooler and snuck down to the end of the block to cross the street without an adult, i caught holy hell from my mother. and it wasn’t just about never, ever, ever crossing without an adult, but also never, ever, ever crossing outside a crosswalk. mom was harsh. the lesson stuck.

ms. spencer, i’m sorry for your loss. but while the driver was the proximate cause of your daughter’s death, it’s possible she’d still be alive if you’d taught her what my mother taught me. what kind of parent sits on the stoop and allows her six year old to cross the street alone, in the middle of the street?

update: i’m not alone in this opinion, it seems.

but alberto gonzales is such a smarmy SOB i just want to smack the smirk off his face. i don’t know how much of this hearing i’m going to be able to stomach.

more updates as events warrant, and so long as i can keep from vomiting my breakfast on my laptop.

update 10:30 a.m.: after trying to dodge the questions posed by specter, gonzales is visibly squirming in his chair during kennedy’s grilling. his eyebrows are running into each other. he’s getting shiny on the forehead. this pleases me. (more…)

yes, what happened to the hokies was awful. now if the media would just stop treating it like a damn photo op (could you get more gorgeous than the saturated colors and silhouettes featured by cnn?) and lovefest (”beautiful, clever, talented victims honored” gushes one cnn video clip… [insert snide “what about the ugly, slow, talentless victims?” comment here]) and get back to coverage of the ongoing destruction of our country by the bush administration, i might be less grumpy.

yes, it was tragic. but to be perfectly honest, the coverage is making me - once again - sympathetic to the harrises and klebolds of the world. it’s certainly one way to achieve immortality.

update: according to the beeb, at least 157 people have been killed in a string of attacks in baghdad. and what’s the lead story on cnn? “gunman: ’suicidal’”

a 3 star general - kevin kiley - has characterized the bulk of the failures in walter reed’s outpatient system as a “failure of leadership at the junior level.” and he’s said that he’s received all the resources he’s asked for for the wramc system… and yet has been unable to fix the system. hrm.

weightman, at least, seems to know what had been - and is - going on. removing him from wramc may have been a mistake; unlike kiley, who comes across as more a politico than a doctor, weightman seems at least an involved administrator.

i’m not the only one to note the difference between the two generals. dana milbank did a much better job of capturing the essence of it at the hearing.

cynthia bascetta, health services director at the GAO, is using the hearing as an opportunity to say (imo, rightly, and i’m interpreting, not quoting) “i’ve been telling those clowns (the military and the administration) about these problems for years.”

particularly poignant, though was the testimony this morning of staff sgt. john shannon. if it’s available on the c-span website, i highly recommend watching it.

UPDATE (now that i’m at a location i can blog freely): so, one of the reps finally got around to ask kiley about the wisdom of the impending brac closure in the middle of a war. kiley said that he recommended against closing wramc, but was overruled by others in the brac committee. (followup questioning revealed that once overruled, he saw no point in continuing to voice objections.) then, like the good soldier following orders, he tried to work on the wramc/navy medical unification while continuing to express concerns regarding the costs of such an undertaking.

i’m not up on the specific lexicon to understand everything that was mentioned, but according to (i think) weightman, when wramc found itself caught between brac and A76, with a workforce that is 2/3 civilian, fuckups were bound to happen. at least weightman actually toured some of the barracks (although not building 18) - kiley apparently never set foot in one during the time he was there.

there was also some question as to whether the outpatient soldiers had been told (expressly or impliedly) that they could not speak to the press; the most detailed information from kiley was that col. hamilton had told the soldiers in formation that if they had any issues, they should bring them to the chain of command. somehow i have a hard time seeing that as a friendly, “come and talk to me anytime, guys” rather than a “don’t air our dirty laundry in public.” but that’s just me.

it’s in all the news: kiley has been appointed acting head of walter reed (wramc), following weightman’s decapitation.

welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss. but both of them have been called to testify before congress on monday.

it appears obama and mccaskill, along with rep. harry mitchell have introduced the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act in the house (h.r. 1268) and senate (bill number as yet unknown) to “fix” what’s wrong at wally world. the next few months should be interesting.

UPDATE: francis harvey, secretary of the army, has resigned.

i’m finishing up a prep course for the MBE portion of the virginia bar, and one of the practice questions reads as follows:

Edgar, a former major league baseball player, was so eager to have his 7-year-old son, Babe, play baseball that he enrolled him in the little league by falsifying Babe’s age.
One afternoon during a ball game, Babe was called out on strikes by Ump, the umpire. Edgar, who was standing behind the baseline, was so infuriated with Ump’s decision that he shouted in a loud voice, “Kill the umpire.” Babe, who was still holding his bat, swung the bat at Ump. Ump ducked and the bat flew out of Babe’s hands and struck Spek, a spectator, who was standing behind the baseline watching the game. Spek was seriously injured.

In an action by Ump against Edgar for assault,

a) Ump will not prevail because Edgar did not have the requisite intent for the action of assault;
b) Ump will not prevail beccause Edgar did not swing the bat at him;
c) Ump will prevail because Babe acted on Edgar’s order; or
d) Ump will prevail because, having falsified Babe’s age, Edgar is responsible for Babe’s conduct.

so as not to spoil your reading of the question & answers, my discussion is continued… (more…)

i should be asleep. but with this nasty case of poison ivy (backs of knees, face, neck, arms and sides) and a scrip for prednisone, i finally fell asleep around 2:00 this morning and then woke up at 6:00. if this keeps up for the full course of the steroid, this house is going to be both spotless and remodelled by the end of next week. muah!

it seems i may have been prematurely thrilled about the otc availability of plan b (more on that by sappho), at least if this woman’s experience is anything to go on. i’d read similar accounts prior to the FDA’s approval, so it was probably naive of me expect anything to change that quickly.

glenn greenwald’s overview of the procedural history behind judge taylor’s ruling on the constitutionality of the NSA surveillance program should be required reading for anyone taking civpro this fall (believe me, taken with the comments in orin kerr’s post on the topic by alkali, john herbison and the text of FRCP 56 with some analysis, it’s a mini-course on the do’s and don’ts of summary judgment).

civpro is in the air, it seems — the defendants in the tobacco industry RICO suit are using FRCP 65 to argue that judge kessler’s injunctions are overly vague.

if discussions of those sorts of legal maneuvering were part of first year civpro, the class would make a lot more sense.

you’d think it was the name of a god. maybe it is. it is also the bane of my existence.

urushiol. the oil in the eeeeeevil poison ivy plant. i’d post photos of my rash, but that would just gross out the people who read this and don’t already know what i look like.

AUUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

but the good news: plan b, OTC! yes, it’s only come about as a result of political horse-trading, which is unfortunate. but better that than not coming about at all.

if my anti-spam plugins don’t get you, i will. and if you write a seemingly-coherent comment, i’ll leave the comment and delete your URLs and modify your e-mail address. so there.

*grumble grumble* fracking spammers *grumble grumble*

…but it pours. and it seems to be pouring into the sun room. *sigh* last final tomorrow, and the roof is leaking at the point the new shingles stop and the old flat roof begins. and the kicker is that this was all supposed to be re-roofed back in april march february.

times like this i really appreciate my roommate. he prevented the damage of a rather nice piece of furniture and an incalculable amount of stuff contained upon/within it. thanks, james.