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Hey gang. Sorry I have been absolutely delinquent in blogging lately. It’s been the first week on the new job, so I’ve been logging long hours in an effort to impress, etc. Over the next several days, I intend to tackle at least these four topics on GOP3: The lawsuit against the Madison Diocese, the US Dept of Justice intern hiring report, the Abrahamson campaign offensive, and the Wispolitics/UW poll. Thoughts on all this and more soon, I promise. Thanks for being patient and your continued readership of our blog.

Sorry I have been light on the blogging the last week. A week ago my dad and I packed up a Budget Rental Truck and began the 17 hour trek from Mequon, Wisconsin to Washington, D.C. Along the way we stopped at Capital University, where Rachel goes to school, a KFC with its Famous Bowl, and the Ramada in Chamberlain, Pennsylvania. We arrived in town Tuesday evening, and quick unpacked to make it to a book talk by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The talk was sponsored by the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Federalist Society.

Which brings me to the life transition: As you may know, I graduated from Marquette Law School on a sunny spring weekend in May. We got hooded on Saturday, graduated on Sunday, and sworn in on Monday. I am now in Washington, D.C. and I’ll be starting a new job next Monday.

I’ve been hired as deputy director of the student division for The Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies. The Society, as you may know, is a nationwide organization of over 40,000 lawyers, law students, and scholars dedicated to promoting conservative and libertarian ideas about the law. My job is to work with our student leaders at our 200 plus law school chapters to help them be more effective in promoting conservative and libertarian ideas on their campuses. The Society was an important part of my time at MULS, and I look forward to contributing to the accomplishment of the organization’s mission on a full-time basis.

Allow me a pair of quick thoughts on news stories from the last week. First, why is no one asking why a Catholic priest was preaching a Sunday sermon in Trinity United Church of Christ, regardless of the message of that preaching?

Second, a brief quotation from a majority opinion by Judge Diane Sykes. The case centered around a petty dispute between neighbors that led to an arrest and case on whether mean remarks on a Halloween display constituted “fighting words.” From the First Amendment Center: “In strong language, Sykes criticized the fact that the conflict resulted in litigation: ‘Lawsuits like this one cast the legal profession in a bad light and contribute to the impression that Americans are an overlawyered and excessively litigious people.’”

Straight from the University News Briefs:

Qdoba Mexican Grill will open on the Marquette campus this summer. Qdoba, a nationally franchised restaurant specializing in fast, fresh Mexican cuisine, will be located at the northwest corner of 16th and Wells, in space recently vacated by George Webb’s.

Mike Whittow, vice president for Hilltop Enterprises, Inc., said George Webb decided to leave the area after five years. “George Webb was a welcome partner in the mix of food operations made available in Campus Town,” he said. “With their departure, we are delighted to have secured so quickly a tenant of the caliber of Qdoba.”

Qdoba offers its signature burritos, tacos, salads, quesadillas, nachos and more. Qdoba expect to open by the end of August.

That George Webb’s was nothing but an eyesore of empty booths and apathetic severs that is FINALLY gone. When your burger can’t compete with the likes of MU Gyros and… MU Gyros? it’s indicative of a problem. Thankfully we’ll be taking another step closer to adding some decent food. Now all we need are some tenants on the East end of campus. Noodles, Panera or 5 Guys is acceptable. 5 Guys… second best burger I’ve ever had… the fries, not so much.

I was recently reintroduced to Qdoba, and though it’s no Chipotle, it is close and their delicious burritos and quesadillas will be accepted whenever I am jonesing for some burrito. I feel like I’ll be willing to walk the extra few blocks past T-Bell and The burrito lounge at Open Pantry. Hopefully they’ll be open late too so I can make a midnight run.

Happy Memorial Day.
My favorite Memorial Day memory is from summer 2005 - I was in Washington, D.C. as part of Marquette’s Les Aspin Center internship program for the summer. We woke up early on Monday morning, and took the metro out to Arlington from our apartment on Capitol Hill. We camped out in the amphitheater, and the President delivered remarks suitable to the occasion just before noon. After the ceremony, we roamed the Cemetery’s hallowed grounds. It was a wonderful day in every respect.

In honor of the fact that Memorial Day is also a three-day weekend, I’ve elected to share some lighter fare:

The following is from the Commencement Address delivered by Vice President Richard B. Cheney last week to the graduating class of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy:

Throughout the corps we have hundreds of impressive, gifted men and women from all across America. There’s even a fourth-class cadet who comes from the same place I do, Casper, Wyoming. I’m told he’s on board the Eagle today, but he’s the only cadet from my home state in the entire Academy. Then again, I guess it’s never taken much manpower to defend Wyoming’s coastline. (Laughter.) We’ve never let enemy vessels get beyond Idaho. (Laughter.)

These remarks reminded me of the Commencement Address the Vice President gave to the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 2006:

As I learned about this class, I was naturally interested, as a resident of Wyoming, in how many graduates happen to come from my home state.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Cheers.) (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That’s one of them. (Laughter.) Actually, I found out there are two in this class — one from Gillette and one from Rock Springs.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Cheers.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would have expected more, considering Wyoming’s maritime traditions and the breadth of our coastline. (Laughter.) But I will remind Midshipmen McFarrin and Rawson — (applause) — of the motto I used to have when I was the lone congressman from Wyoming: It may be a small delegation, but it’s all quality. (Laughter and applause.)

So for all of you who think the Veep is a dour, darth vader like figure, forget it!

For any one else tuned in to the 43rd Academy of Country Music on CBS right now, it is quite clear that Luke Bryan should have been the New Male Vocalist of the Year. If “All my friends say” didn’t win it outright, then clearly “We Rode in Trucks” should have made it a slam dunk.

We’ve come a long way since Donkey Kong and Super Mario in the world of video games, in fact Rockstar Games spent $100 million to get to where they are at in creating the most amazing, visually stunning, violent, offensive and graphic video game to date. The game is expected to make it’s production costs four times over this week alone. Grand Theft Auto IV has probably been the most anticipated game of the series since it’s the first to come out for the Playstation 3 and utilize it’s graphic software. And since the game’s release it has broken sales records all over the place. In England the game some 609,000 copies in a 24 hour period, shattering the previous record held by GTA San Andreas. Sadly, I haven’t been able to play the game yet, a PS3 is still a touch of out my affordability range right now but you can donate to my PS3/GTA IV fund if you so desire?

The game has attracted a huge amount of press, probably the most since the introduction of Grand Theft Auto III for PS2 which set the standard for video game violence and story line. GTA IV has taken all of that to a new level. In IV you play as Bosnian veteran Nikos Bellic. You’re brother has been telling you that you need to join him in living the American dream. But as soon as you get there you find out that your brother is not rich, is not popular and in fact owes a lot of money to some very bad people. Once arriving in America, there is only one way to work your way up to the American dream, through murder drug dealing, and engaging in other nefarious activities with a never ending supply of guns and cars.

The game was slapped with the ESRB rating of M (mature) for its language, intense violence, drug use, nudity and everything like that.From what I’ve read, it seems like the latest Grand Theft Auto replaces the somewhat cartoonish volence with hardcore in your face blood and gore, though the game retains it’s hilarious parodies and political satire. However the game is still rated as the one of the best games ever. Most game reviews put it in the 9.5 (+)/10 rating.

I’m not very surprised that a game so awesome would attract a lot of bad press and subsequently a lot of politicians and groups have condemned the game. Almost immediately New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg condemned the game, since the story of the game is sent in New York-esque Liberty City. Lets not forget about the renowned Baptist’s Press criticism of the game.
Also, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has come out with this statement about the game, since you can actually consume alcohol and drive drunk (though the game developers recommend grabbing a taxi):

“Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke … Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.”

Nevertheless, MADD has called upon the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game, effectively banning the game from sale in the U.S. since neither Sony nor Microsoft allow the sale of AO games on their respective consoles in America.

Regarding the game’s violence, the NYPD association president Pat Lynch told the New York Daily News on Wednesday that, “being involved in a shootout in a video game has no consequences and that is the wrong message to send to young people.”
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and the mother of a killed NYPD officer echoed similar sentiments in the same report, saying GTA IV “doesn’t exactly teach the kind of things that you’d want to teach your kids,” or more descriptively put, “teaches children to kill.”

Glen Beck recently ranted on Grand Theft Auto 4. Now normally I’m a big Glen Beck fan, and bought his “Inconvenient Book” for my dad. But here he and the people he interviewed look like buttheads. His opening part is probably the dumbest anti-video game rant you’ll see.

Honestly if you leave your kids unsupervised for 12-16 hours a day, only bad things can happen and it’s not the video game maker’s fault. Can we blame bad parenting instead of the games themselves? And actually Glen, I just got a hooker and killed her while watching your rant.

Barak Obama even metioned GTA IV in one of his speeches in Indiana.

I was just catching the news this morning about Grand Theft Auto, this video game, which is gonna break all records and make goo-gobs of money for whoever designed it. Now, this isn’t intended for kids, although I promise you there are kids who are playing it, but these video games are raising our kids…
Across the board, middle-class, upper-class, working-class kids, they’re spending a huge amount of their time not on their studies, but on entertainment.
And so part of our job is going to have to be to inspire the entire country to say, ‘How are we giving our kids a thirst for knowledge?’ And turning off the TV set, and getting them to be engaged and interested, like their future really does matter on how well they do in school.”

Obama’s remarks are pretty true, here I am blogging about playing GTA IV, while Luke and I play GTA: San Andreas the weekend before finals. Personally, I feel that the audience that plays a game like this should be mature enough to know the difference between real life and a video game so there shouldn’t be any problems from playing the game. And if you don’t know the difference between a video game and real life, you need your head examined. I think it’s really the judgment of the parents to allow the purchase of the game to someone that is right the 15-17 range. Even my mom thought it was best that I still knew the difference reality and the game after playing GTA III for a few hours. It’s easy to understand that just some responsible parenting will reduce the controversy that playing this game would create.

Here is one of the videos promoting the game so I’ll let you be the judge.

No matter what you think about the game’s content, you can’t debate how visually stunning it is (insert Homer Simpson drool sound here).

Hey folks. Sorry that the blogging has been really sparse of late - it’s exams season here at Marquette University and my RSS reader has literally 488 posts in the backlog. So rather than original analysis, take these 3 quick hits.

First, in honor of Dr. Christopher Wolfe’s last lecture at Marquette, consider this from Romer v. Evans, Justice Scalia’s dissent, which Dr. Wolfe recently identified as one of his favorite passages in American constitutional law:

When the Court takes sides in the culture wars, it tends to be with the knights rather than the villeins–and more specifically with the Templars, reflecting the views and values of the lawyer class from which the Court’s Members are drawn. How that class feels about homosexuality will be evident to anyone who wishes to interview job applicants at virtually any of the Nation’s law schools. The interviewer may refuse to offer a job because the applicant is a Republican; because he is an adulterer; because he went to the wrong prep school or belongs to the wrong country club; because he eats snails; because he is a womanizer; because she wears real animal fur; or even because he hates the Chicago Cubs.
But if the interviewer should wish not to be an associate or partner of an applicant because he disapproves of the applicant’s homosexuality, then he will have violated the pledge which the Association of American Law Schools requires all its member schools to exact from job interviewers: “assurance of the employer’s willingness” to hire homosexuals. Bylaws of the Association of American Law Schools, Inc. §6-4(b); … This law school view of what “prejudices” must be stamped out may be contrasted with the more plebeian attitudes that apparently still prevail in the United States Congress…

And then another classic of Con Law brought to our attention by Dr. Wolfe, from then-Associate Justice Rehnquist’s dissenting opinion in Carey v. Population Services. Talk about a rhetorical flight:

Those who valiantly but vainly defended the heights of Bunker Hill in 1775 made it possible that men such as James Madison might later sit in the first Congress and draft the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. The post-Civil War Congresses which drafted the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution could not have accomplished their task without the blood of brave men on both sides which was shed at Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor. If those responsible for these Amendments, by feats of valor or efforts of draftsmanship, could have lived to know that their efforts had enshrined in the Constitution the right of commercial vendors of contraceptives to peddle them to unmarried minors through such means as window displays and vending machines located in the men’s room of truck stops, notwithstanding the considered judgment of the New York Legislature to the contrary, it is not difficult to imagine their reaction.

Finally, my way of taking a break from studying has been reading CICERO: The life and times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. It’s my third pass through the book (I’m somewhat of a Cicero fan).

This is Cicero’s comment on Julius Caesar:

When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.

This is my comment on Cicero’s comment.

With 45th pick of the 7th round of the 2008 NFL Draft, the St. Louis Rams selected David Vobora, Outside linebacker from Idaho, as this year’s Mr. Irreleavant, the 252 and last overall pick in the draft. Vobora, will join other Irrelevant players like Ramzee Robinson, Andy Stokes, Kevin McMahan, and the pride of Gustavus Adolphus Ryan Hoag.

The 6’1” 236lbs Ouside Linebacker gets quite a special treatment as Mr. Irrelevant. including a welcoming reception, banquet dinner that presents the Lowsman Trophy (opposite of the Heisman), a trip to Disneyland, a surfing adventure, a beach BBQ and tailgating party. Oh and the last player drafted gets the coolest customized jersey ever with the name Mr. Irrelevant on the back with #252. If I could get that jersey, I would.

The title of Mr. Irrelevant arose in 1976, from former USC and NFL Wide Receiver Paul Salata. Some players that have received the award go to contribute to NFL teams including Jim Finn who started at Fullback for the New York Giants and Mike Green has been a starting safety for the Bears, Marty Moore became the first Mr. Irrelevant to play in a Super Bowl and is a current back up for the Seahawks.

Here is ESPN’s take on Vobora: In his first three seasons at Idaho (2004-’06), Vobora appeared in all 35 games (21 starts) had 194 tackles (15.5 for losses), two sacks, five forced fumbles, an interception and four pass breakups. As a senior in 2007, he played all 12 games and piled up 148 tackles (6.5 for losses), one sack, one forced fumble and an interception. Vobora didn’t miss a game in his Vandals career. Vobora doesn’t have any notable physical attributes but he’s smart, tenacious and just athletic enough to develop into an effective reserve linebacker who also contributes on special teams.

As Ronald Reagan’s top policy aide in the White House and Attorney General of the United States from 1985-1988, Ed Meese has earned his reputation as an American statesman. Currently chair of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, Meese helped spark renewed attention to originalist jurisprudence as AG. On Thursday, April 17, General Meese will visit Marquette Law School to answer the question, “Would the Founding Fathers Recognize Today’s Supreme Court?”

Thursday, April 17th
11:45: Free Lunch catered by Einstein Bagels
12:15: Lecture and Q&A

Marquette Law School
1103 W. Wisconsin Avenue
Eisenberg Hall - 3rd floor
Sponsored by The Federalist Society

Even though baseball is getting underway (the Brewers are 13 outs -and 3 runs- away from a sweep of the Cubs, On pace for 162-0 Season, Braun is 53 games away from tying Joltin Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak) and Marquette Women’s Basketball is playing for the NIT Championship, I feel that the NFL is deserving of comment.

Yesterday the NFL announced a handful of rule changes that will easily make the game better. However one rule that was proposed to be changed won’t be and that’s a good thing. Wild card teams that a better record than the division champion will not get a home playoff game. I would not be in favor of wild card teams getting a home game if at all possible.

Rules that were changed include the elimination of the five yard facemask rule. Which is great because no referee ever called any running back for stiff-arming a linebacker in the face, but they got offensive linemen for it rather often.

Here are the other rules that were changed:

• Officials won’t allow completions if a receiver makes a catch but is forced out of bounds while in the air. Officials will have to decide only whether a receiver landed in bounds.
• Instant replay will be available to review extra-point and field-goal attempts that bounce off the support that is behind the crossbar.
• Coaches will be able to defer a decision on the opening coin toss, as their college counterparts are able to do. Previously, NFL coaches who won the coin toss could decide only to kick or receive to open the game, rather than make the decision for the second half.
• A direct snap from center that goes backward will be treated as a fumble, rather than a false start.
• The 5-yard penalty for an incidental face-mask infraction was eliminated. A 15-yard penalty will be assessed for twisting or grabbing the face mask

The only other real important rule changed would be the force out rule change. It’s so questionable whether a receiver would ever come down in bounds if they were pushed out.

Now the only rule that could make the game better would be that the NFL adopt the college football style overtime rules.

—
Even though were a few games into the season I feel like I can still post my MLB 08 predictions. Its important to have them documented to prove how right you are in the post season

NL
East: Mets
Central: Cubs
West: Diamondbacks
Wild Card: Brewers

NL Champ: Mets
MVP: David Wright (Mets)
Cy Young: Johan Santana (Mets)
ROY: Fukudome (Cubs)

AL
East: Red Sox
Central: Tigers
West: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California of The United States of America of North America…
Wild Card: Yankees
**The Tampa Bay Rays will finish above .500****
AL Champs: Tigers

MVP: Alex Rodriguez (Yankees)
Cy Young: Josh Beckett (Red Sox)
ROY:Jacoby Ellsbury (Red Sox)

World Series: Tigers over Mets in 6