Most of this is for Oregonians – but if you are being scammed like this in another state – contact your own State Attorney General…..and there is Federal information in the last paragraph…

It's so much fun to wake up to the news during an election cycle – but today hit the trifecta!

1- Iowa miscounted the caucus numbers – Santorum actually won.

This raises the questions as to why  a state that can't count so few ballots get to go first ?

Maybe it's to show us that home schooling does not work???

2 – Rick Perry is dropping out [oops suspending his campaign]

AND – throws his support to Gingrich

3 -  and Gingrich? Wife #2 just said in an interview that Newt wanted an open marriage – and that his then mistress, Callista, was ok with that.

[aside to wife #2 - he cheated on #1 with you - did you think he would change?]

Hmm – so Callista the Catholic was ok with that then…is she ok with it now as wife #3?

[Surely the Catholic church is not ok with this...]

And it's not even noon back in South Carolina – will we hit another trifecta today?

Why is this site, and many others, totally or partially blacked out today?

It's a solidarity move to stop SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act.]

What is SOPA? From the point of view of many of us in the USA – it's a misguided attempt to stop the piracy of films and music. And guess what? the music and film industry stand solidly behind this bill – DUH!

Why is it misguided? Well it contains provisions that could shut down most of the Internet by a big player [ISP, etc.] saying "my content was stolen."

SHUT DOWN THAT SITE.

Or saying "that site linked to a site that had my stolen content." 

SHUT DOWN THAT SITE.

Goodbye Wikipedia, goodbye Google, goodbye YouTube, goodbye any site that they "say" they have an issue with.

It will stop creativity, stop inventions and stop the free exchange of ideas! It is censorship!

And if you are a small business who relies on a website and the Internet – it can hurt your business!!

For a more scholarly discussion see Wikipedia.

To take action: http://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

If you are a public interest legal entity – here is a possibility for you to have a summer intern at no cost to you.

See the letter I received [below] about the job fair you can attend [free of charge.] If you have any questions about the school, please ask them in the comments. This is the law school I attended.

************************

The University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law (UDC-DCSL) continues its successful program to fund law students who work full-time at summer public interest law jobs.

If you work for a non-profit public interest organization, government agency, or in the judicial system, and would like a UDC-DCSL student to work for you full-time this summer, at no cost to you,

Please join us for the:

Summer Public Interest Job Fair

Wednesday, February 8, 2012: 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

UDC David A. Clarke School of Law

Room 214 (Second Floor)

4340 Connecticut Ave NW  (Note: Our new building!) Washington DC 20008 Red Line: Van Ness/UDC

Facts About the Summer Fellowship Program

1) Qualifying organizations include non-profits that serve public interest purposes, local and federal government agencies, and the judiciary. Students must be doing legal work under direct supervision of a licensed attorney.

Individuals or others seeking legal assistance, private law firms and for-profit organizations do not qualify. If your organization has not previously hosted a fellow, you will need prior approval from Ms. Bauman.

2) First-year law students are categorically eligible for the stipend. If funds are available, upper class students may be eligible.

3) Students must work at least 400 hours work by the end of the summer. They can earn up to $4000 from the law school.  Supervising attorneys provide a mid-term and final evaluation, and certify student time records. Students must complete the application process with Ms. Bauman and have their placement approved before they are eligible for funding.

The Fellowship Fair

Group representatives should bring information about the agency and any application materials.  There is no cost to attend.

TO RESERVE A TABLE

Please send your RSVP to Dena Bauman, Director of Career Services,  mailto:dbauman@udc.edudbauman@udc.edu. Please be SURE to include the name of the person attending, your organization, street/mailing address, phone, fax and email, and your organization's web site. Please also attach your written internship description.

Guest parking may be available.

Please email your request by January 31, 2012.

There are a host of reasons why people love politics and here are a few……

Politics is a circus!

Depending on the season and the upcoming election – it can be a multi-ring circus and not just your typical 3-ringer.

In Washington, D.C. where politics is a 24/7 event – one has friends calling friends to say let’s meet at X building and watch the circus! For political junkies, there is no need to be more specific – you just know what is going on.

Politics leads to good drinking games.   

No matter your political persuasion, there are drinking games that you can invent for when you watch debates. Many of the games involve a drink each time a certain word is said. And since the debates are repetitious, you know which words are likely to be said.

Politics makes for great cartoons and one-liners.

Every two years we have the opportunity to poke cartoonish fun at the candidates – and with Photoshop – we are all potential budding cartoonists. Or we can use their words in our own one-liners since almost everyone knows the origin – think “oops.”

Lastly for this list:

Politics can drive your non-political friends crazy wondering why you are so into politics. 

Of course during election cycles they might also avoid you

Why are you into politics?

Free Event: Friday, December 9 and Saturday, December 10

Register at http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Race_and_Higher_Public_Education

_________________________

Washington, Race and Public Higher Education

"Washington, Race and Public Higher Education," a two-day conference at the University of the District of Columbia on December 9 and 10, provides an occasion to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the University and the publication of Since 1851: 160 Years of Scholarship and Achievement in the Nation's Capital.

The anniversary book, commissioned by the University, written by two historians, Drs. Marjorie Lightman and William Zeisel, and published by the University of the District of Columbia Press uses photographs and text to trace the history of the University through its predecessor colleges and their relations with the District, Congress and national events. The conference draws together scholars from within and outside the University, public policy specialists, and interested members of the community to examine some of the themes developed in the book.

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, December 9th

Continental Breakfast (9am)

Panel 1, Opening Session (10am): "The Possibilities and Limits of the University over the Coming Decades"

Moderator: Dr. Allen Sessoms, President, University of the District of Columbia

Presenters:

Dr. Clara Lovett, President emerita, Northern Arizona State University

Dr. Steven Diner, Chancellor, Rutgers University-Newark, New Jersey

Dr. William Hynes, President, Holy Name University, Oakland, California

Description: The three college presidents will present papers exploring the character and issues that define a modern, multifaceted university. Speaking from experience garnered at their own institutions and positions of leadership in higher education, they will provide a national perspective for understanding an urban university, its mission, commitment to service and intellectual discourse, as well as its social conscience. The panel will look to the future to suggest what a university can and cannot offer the community which it serves.

Open discussion will follow the papers.

Lunch will be served to conference participants.

Panel 2: Access Secured: Programs that Succeed (1:30 pm)

Moderator: Dr. Susan Harkness, Assistant Dean, University of the District of Columbia

Presenters:

Susan Scanlan, President, the Women's Research and Education Institute

Shelley Broderick, Dean, David A. Clarke School of Law, University of the District of Columbia

Dr. Carolyn Cousin, Professor, Department of Biology, University of the District of Columbia

Description:The participants have directed three different kinds of programs-internships in the NGO sector and Congress, a clinic-based law school, and undergraduate/graduate education in biology and chemistry. Each of the programs hasachieved success in nontraditional pedagogy, outreach, and inclusivity for women and minorities. Thepanel will explore the characteristics that have underpinned success. It will particularly focus on the development of a supportive and individualized relationship between faculty/mentors and student/participants, and the access that the programs have provided for students/participants at a critical point in their professional development. Turning to the future, the panel will address whether these programs can be significantly expanded and remain as successful, as well as the institutional/organizational costs for similar programs in terms of commitment on the part of the institution/organization, individual mentors and students/participants.

Open discussion will follow the papers.

BREAK

Panel 3: Elements of the University: Change and Continuity(3:30-5 pm)

Moderator: Dr. Christi Ford, University of the District of Columbia

Presenters:

Christopher Anglim, Archivist, University of the District of Columbia

Dr. Monica Jacobe, Writing Program, Princeton University

Dr. Herbert Weiss, Senior Fellow, Wilson Center, Washington, DC

Description: The modern, multifaceted urban university has evolved over time. Central to the evolution has been the interplay between financial support from the government and faculty. In this panel Anglim will focus on land-grant legislation, status and the university, which is the oldest direct federal government support for higher education. Jacobe will explore the complex issues of tenured and contract faculty from the perspective of the university and members of the faculty. She will reflect on possible latent consequences as the older community-of-scholars model of the university has been transformed into anew administratively driven institution. Weiss will examine the centers for area studies, especially African studies, in the Cold War period and beyond. He will trace the community of government and scholarly interests that supported and debated with one another over decades as government, public policy and scholarship became increasingly intertwined in the late 20th century.

Open discussion will follow the papers.

SATURDAY, December 10th

Continental Breakfast (8:30 am)

Panel 4: Washington: A Shifting Landscape (9:30-11:00 am)

Moderator: Anthony Gittens, Professor emeritus, University of the District of Columbia

Presenters:

Dr. William Zeisel, co-author of Since 1851; Partner, QED Associates LLC

Dr. Andrew Lightman, author and Managing Editor, Hill Rag

Amanda Huron, City Planner, City University of New York

Description: The panel will focus on change on the District, especially after the 1960s. Using the material from Since 1851…, Zeisel will set the historical background for the panel with key moments that highlight District politics, Congress and national affairs in the story of higher education before and after the formation of the University in 1974.Lightman and Huron will provide a political and economic focus for the same decades of the late 20th century. Lightman will examine local political satire that fed the popular imagination of the largest US city run by African Americans in the 1970s and 80s. He will compare it with more recent political satire that reflects the city's changing economics and demography. Huron will look at gentrification, especially in the cooperative and condominium movement which began in the 70s, and which contributed to social changes that have transformed areas of the city like Capitol Hill.

BREAK

Panel 5: Black and White: Race Then and Now (11:30 am-12:45 pm)

Moderator: Dr. Marjorie Lightman, co-author Since 1851…

Presenters:

Dr. G. Derek Musgrove, Professor, University of the District of Columbia

Meredith Rode, Professor, University of the District of Columbia

Dr. Kimala Price, Professor, San Diego State University, San Diego, California

Description: Race has played a prominent role in Washington public higher education. The choices considered and made have been shaped by black/white politics since before the Civil War. Almost never observed and commented upon, however, is that from 1851 until 1968 public higher education in Washington also had an almost completely female student body. This panel will focus on the period of the late 1960s through 80s when black studies and women's studies were fostering fundamental changes in the traditional disciplinary canons of the arts and sciences. Musgrove will explore the politics and passions that surrounded the demand for black studies at Federal City College in 1969. Rode will reflect on the experience of being young, white, southern and female in her first "real" faculty position during the same tumultuous period. Price will focus to the intersections between black studies and women's studies that developed in 70s and 80s. She will explore the importance of these intersections for effective education, especially of minority women who increasingly dominate the student bodies of public universities, including the University of the District of Columbia.

Open discussion will follow the papers.

LUNCH (12:45-2 pm) Concluding Discussion and Remarks

All panels will be held in the Learning Resources Division (Building 41), Room A03.

Space is limited. Please RSVP: JCatching@UDC.EDU

Are you in or near Washington D.C. for Thanksgiving?

You might be interested in this ……

Tuesday, Nov. 22^nd is the 19^th annual Rauh Lecture

This year’s speaker is Harold Koh, Legal Advisor to the U.S. State Department.

There will be a chance to ask questions about the U.S. Constitution and the State Department following the presentation.

The event is free – please share the information.

http://www.law.udc.edu/event/RauhLecture2011

Food insecurity is a nicer way of saying you are going hungry!

Like Mother Hubbard our cupboards are bare!

And as we grow older, more of us are falling into this category of insecurity.

Age groups rarely looked at by any measure regarding food needs are now included – and it seems that almost 5 million of those between 50 and 59 [the younger "boomers"] are at risk of hunger. And that figure was from a few years ago.

How many more will be hungry each year?

It turns out that more than 9% of older Americans were at risk of hunger in 2009 -  a whopping 79 % increase since 2001.

The economy is bad and it is impacting not only the potential of losing one's home, but of being hungry as well.

Do we not care about our elders anymore?  Are we living longer only to lose our homes and go hungry?

There are boomers and older who must make choices each month – rent or food? Food or medications?

Yes there are programs that can help but they too are low on funds and supplies. If everyone is poor and in need of food – just who will supply the food banks?

If congress thinks cutting food and service programs for the elderly and poor is a good way to save money – how will older people and poor people survive?

I'm saddened by where we as a country have gone.

We spend more on wars, debts, and who-knows-what while allowing our own citizens to starve, go homeless and get sick and die because certain politicians prefer

• to allow the rich to get richer
• to create more wars
• not allow for universal health care
• to meddle in medical care for women

There was a "tweet" recently that said something like the USA should invade the USA and win hearts and minds of the people by providing food, shelter and infrastructure.

Comments? Thoughts? Thank you.

Just think – it's only 13 more months of TV ads, political grandstanding, innuendo and quasi-debates before we have the 2012 election. [GROAN]

Listening to the current rhetoric [mostly online] makes me sick.

Job killing taxes? Duh! You CEOs are not creating jobs; at least not in the USA.

You bankers – you got bailed out by us – the citizens – and instead of letting it out as loans to small businesses you hold onto that money and invest it to make profits for your CEOs and shareholders.

With the economy in trouble and a president asking for you to pay a fairer share of taxes [which, by the way you used to do] you instead have your minions in congress shout that it's class warfare.

Allow poor people to go hungry and die? "That's freedom."

Allow veterans to be homeless? "It's their choice."

Allow seniors to go without food, medicines and lose their homes? "Let family and/or the church take care of them."

Nothing wrong in your minds with any of the above. Right?

But let people like me ask you to pay a little more in taxes – that's class warfare?

No – big corporations – you have it wrong. You stole from the middle class and now you seek to blame us, the 99%, for asking that you give back what you stole!

No wonder Occupy Wall Street is scaring you – you are being forced to give it some media coverage only because the social media outlets are forcing you to do so. But you'd prefer to have 99% of the population arrested so you can keep on with your greed.

Below is the text of what we call the Declaration of Independence.

But we are not independent!

We have moved our loyalty from King George to greed, to corporations, and to politics as a "game."

Maybe it's time to re-declare our independence?

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.