Revealing

Since we were just talking about the chattering classes, I thought I’d relate and briefly discuss a few recent comments from the Volokh site, from a post by Professor Kenneth Anderson on… oh… something or other with respect to higher education.

(By the way, that site always seems to take a long time to load, for no discernible reason.)

Now before I get into this I want to say that I think very well of Professor Anderson from what I know of him and don’t want to single him out for harsh criticism.  I am not attacking Professor Anderson; I am using something he said to illustrate a larger point not just about him, but about the class he typifies.

That would be, of course, the chattering classes.  Professor Anderson is a one percenter.  Or at least an adjunct to the one percenters.

In his discussion of the pitfalls for students who might want to broaden their areas of study from the humanities into the sciences, Prof. Anderson relates that some “very bright” students are reluctant to do that not because they don’t need to acquire the knowledge, but because it might give them a down tick on their GPA.  Casting about for a compromise solution, he comes up with “pass/fail” type science courses that humanities students can take without worrying about the impact on the GPA.  He then goes on to state:

This is why I am suggesting workarounds that might be doable at some schools, emphasizing pass-not pass minors, etc. The problem is how to manage both credential and education, in a world in which everyone understands the costs, the fantastic risks, and everyone is leveraging every credential advantage on the margin. I advise students that they have to put the credential first. It’s what I tell my daughter. I don’t like it, but I didn’t create the rules.

Well.

I brought him up on this gently, in a comment to which he did not respond, though it’s clear he’s reading the comments pretty closely.

SCOTUS Denies Relief – Woe Unto The 99%

Not even.  Doesn’t seem like it got by the clerk’s office.

So, what now?

Sephora’s still on parole, until March.  As long as she is on parole, a federal habeas corpus petition is viable.  Having slept on it, I think it’s fair to conclude that the Supreme Court is out, at least as far as any further attempts to go there directly.  I mean, I could just bring another petition down there – see Supreme Court rule 20.4(b) – but the time is too short.  They might take another month or more just to determine that they aren’t going to do anything and of course that is the overwhelmingly likely result, as it always is.

But a petition could still be brought in the US District Court in Rochester.  There are many problems with this, of course.  I’ll just mention a couple, for now.

The first problem is, it can’t be done without me, both in a lawyer capacity and a witness capacity.  Either way, I would have to physically go to Rochester.  If I do that under present circumstances, I think the risk to my personal safety is significant enough that it’s unwise to run the risk.  Unless perhaps there is no alternative.

However, this could change in the near term.  As regular readers of the blog know, I have applied for asylum in Canada, where I am currently residing.  If the application is granted, killing me during a trip to Rochester would become an international incident and expose the perpetrators to a level of scrutiny that they could not be confident of successfully evading.  The refugee hearing was held in Toronto on September 29th and a decision should be rendered within the next month.

That would still leave time to go to the District Court with a petition.