Osler's Razor

Tonight I was driving home after giving a talk in St. Paul and flipped on the radio. There was President Obama, in an informal discussion about veteran's issues. He was smart and easygoing and sincere and sometimes funny. What he said made sense, and he acknowledged that reasonable people disagreed with him on some of the points. It wasn't that different than many talks he has given over these almost-eight years.

It was a stark contrast from what we heard from both candidates in this week's debate, and it made me nostalgic for something-- the Obama administration-- that is not quite done. Certainly, I have disagreed with some things this president has done. In fact, I have written over a dozen critical op-eds and went on a rant at the White House itself. Still, I think that this president has done a remarkable job, and may be the best of my adult life. We did not get embroiled in war. He engaged in addressing important issues, including clemency. He spoke in a very real way to many of our nation's greatest needs.

Are you nostalgic? Or something less positive?

In this election season, like the last one, and the one before that, I hear people on both sides talking as if the most important thing in determining the outcome of their lives is who gets elected President of the United States. How many times now has it been declared that 1988 or 1992 or 2000 or 2008 or 2016 is "the most important election of our lives" because if the wrong choice is made this country will never be the same?

Well... this country will never be the same as it is right now in a few years regardless of who wins the election. That's how history works with complex organisms like large nations. We are terrible at predicting what it is that creates those changes, too-- there will be surprises and that is inevitable because so many things come together to shape our collective society. Politics and the government that results is just one of those factors, and often an insignificant one.

More importantly, the decisions we make about what to do with our own lives will almost always be more significant to our individual outcomes than anything a president does. The vocation you choose, the relationships you nurture, even the car you buy are probably going to matter more than what President Trump/Clinton does. Even a war doesn't directly affect many Americans other than service members and their families. If you don't believe me about that, talk to a veteran about what it is like to come home from an overseas deployment to find that everyone back here had pretty much forgotten about what was going on in Afghanistan or Iraq and went about their business.

I know several people who are remarkably talented in their field, but at the moment are unable to converse for long without reverting to obsessive and often apocalyptic diatribes about the presidential election. Meanwhile, the beauty and eloquence of the complicated and exquisite life they live out otherwise is shoved roughly beneath the ugliness of politics that gets slopped over the top of everything.

My state once elected Jesse Ventura as governor. He was a pro wrestler before that. You know what happened? Well... pretty much what always happens. Some people got married, and it was a stunning, wonderful moment. Others suffered with a loved one who was dying. Some took a new job that either brought fulfillment or misery. Not much had to do with Jesse Ventura.

Much as we would often like to believe that someone else is primarily responsible for our success or failure, that is rarely true. 

So... take a breath. I will too. And then let's all make good choices about those things we actually control. Politics matters, but not as much as we seem to think.

The consensus seemed to be that Desiree's haiku was the most troubling/awesome of them all last week, on the subject of lousy jobs:

Vet office intern.
Plucked fur off cat testicles,
and some fun stuff too.

Ewwww.

Just be glad that I am foregoing a picture of this. Anyways, check out her blog, The Green Momster (and don't worry, it does not have a photo of this, either!).

Yesterday was my Mom's birthday, and I have been reflecting on things that I have learned from her, however awkwardly or incompletely. Yes-- don't worry-- I also called her and sent a little present, but that doesn't mean I haven't also thought long and hard about a few great moments.

One of my mother's great gifts has always been to find beauty and grace in nearly any place or situation. She is the one who notices the wildflowers growing by the abandoned crack house, or hue of a perfect tomato. It's something I have learned to look for, and allow in when we are someplace together.

It seems that focusing on small beauty, the beauty in the spaces, can really bring joy. It also is more reliable that trying to see big things as beautiful, or hero-izing people or institutions that are inevitably complex and disappointing.  I might hear brute stupidity in what someone says; it could be that my mom hears the same, but what she notes is his use of the right word or reluctance to compound something hurtful. 

It must mean something that God speaks to us in a "still small voice." Perhaps we need to listen in that same spirit.

A report from my panel at Vermont Law School last week... you can see it here.  I would note that I was saying that drugs are a market for harmful products, just like casinos and fast food-- not that those things pose equivalent dangers.

The best part was sharing a table with two great thinkers. Jeremy Haile is a Texan (and sometime poster here as TexPat) who spent much of his career doing remarkable work at the Sentencing Project. Ekow Yankah is a professor at Cardozo Law School who has some great insights into the law-- I have been reading some of his writing, and it is fascinating.

You can see the panel discussion here:

Should someone tell IPLawGuy that this is pretty easily possible now?

Second Battery
Charge one while other in use
Switch them; keep going.

But Christine is onto something real (though who would buy it)?:

My ideal IPhone?
One that turns off when the car
starts. Much safer roads.

Playing sports, especially the most violent sports, is often characterized as "building character." Does it really do that? And what principles do they teach?

As with all things, it depends on who is teaching you. "Winning is the most important thing" is a terrible goal. Winning what? It takes into account nothing about the value of the contest. Some things are not worth winning, yet people who are competitive, who have been trained to always win, pursue them with a full-throated roar regardless.

What does winning mean?

Christ always turned everything upside down. It is the meek who win the earth. Why, then is it so hard for our Christian society to accept the value of the meek?

Do you ever fantasize about what cell phones might someday be able to do? I know that I do. For one thing, I am hoping that my phone will be able to answer my calls about clemency and give people competent answers.

Here, I will go first:

If only my phone
Would run around on little legs
And jump up and down!

I really do want that. Sigh.

Anyways, now it is your turn. Just use the 5/7/5 pattern o' syllables, and have some fun!

In a move that signals something interesting about the way we think about criminal justice, Michelle Alexander is going to serve for the next five years as a Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. According to Union, Alexander (best known for her book The New Jim Crow) will both teach and "engage in directed study in consultation with Union faculty to provide her with a strong theological foundation for her work at Union and beyond."

I think this is a really exciting development, one that will move the discussion of criminal law reform towards a faith that should seek change and has the ability to bring great resources to bear.

That's my favorite word from Gavin's great haiku:

A field with pheasants.
Flush. Bang. Dang! He flies away.
First miss of the year. 

You really have to be from Baylor to understand the Farmer's, but if you are you will:

May not feel like fall
here 'till TCU game or
even Kansas State.

Christine went right to the heart of one of my favorite things:

The Farmers Market
So many types of apples
Sweet, crunchy, tart, crisp.

Meanwhile, it seem that the Medievalist forgot that he lives in Texas!

Shorter days are here
The heat of summer dwindles,
Soon frost coats the mind.

Doesn't it seem like fall is the deepest season? It is in the fall that the change of the season is the sharpest and most distinct: it begins with the change in the air, and ends with the first flakes of snow, despite what the calendar might say.

And yes, there is death, as represented by the leaves that change color and fall to the earth. But what is deeper than that? They fall, and linger, gather together, and turn to earth. 

I love this Psalm, #42, which feels like an autumn song:

Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
    all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.
 By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.

Judge locks up 4 more Detroit principals for robbing students

Sigh. I do have to say, though, that I am proud of my former colleagues in the Detroit US Attorney's office and US Attorney Barbara McQuade for bringing these cases. It is one area where deterrence might work.

What games did I watch? Well, Alabama/USC. Which was fun. I don't like either team at all, but USC is probably the worst in terms of arrogance + cheating + always getting the benefit of the doubt at the start of every year.  So watching them get torn apart was ok by me.

I also watched some of the Wisconsin/LSU game which was awesome. Big Ten over SEC? I'll take that anytime, and I got my wish. Plus, there was plenty of televised highjacks by America's Third Greatest Mascot, Bucky Badger:

Didn't you love this haiku by the Waco Farmer, about his kindergarten teacher? "Made me feel like a student" is a high compliment.

Mrs. Figgen! She
made me feel like a student,
learning everyday.

As the week closes, I'm reflecting on all that happened. Clemency seems a lot more real when you tell the prisoners they will be freed.

One question I am sometimes asked is whether granting clemency to someone who was over-sentenced is justice or mercy. My answer is that it is both.

Certainly, the sentence (ie, life without parole for a low-level, non-violent narcotics offense) in many of these cases was not just. It was unjust because it was disproportional to what people got for more serious crimes, it was unjust because the length of these sentences did not correlate with any reasonable need for retribution, and they were unjust because justifications rooted in deterrence did not correlate to reality (since you can't deter a market).  So it is fair to say that correcting those unjust sentences is justice.

But, in a way, it is also mercy. That is because these men and women are receiving a break relative to the sentence they were given according to the law in place. Clemency has something else that fits the shape of mercy, too: it is uneven and unpredictable. 

Is it justice? Yes. Is is mercy? Yes. Does it matter which one you call it? Not really, in that moment when freedom becomes a reality, and a prison door opens.

It was quite a week for news in the wake of all the clemency grants...

Yesterday I had a piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune titled Donald Trump, Meet Ronald Blount. Reading it over, I realize that it memorializes one of my favorite moments yet in this life.

I got to talk to the BBC about another one of our clients, Richard Von Winrow.

Ted Haller came back to UST to talk about the events of the week on Fox 9.

Conservative site The Daily Caller had a nice piece about the UST Clinic.

And, way back on Tuesday when all of this came down, Carrie Johnson did a great job with it on NPR.

There is much work left to be done...

Yesterday I got to talk to my former student Ted Haller about the clemency cases we have worked on. Ted was a wonderful student in my clinic and he is now a reporter for Fox 9 here in Minneapolis. It is a job he is well qualified for-- with his law degree and an undergrad degree from Northwestern's Medill school of journalism-- and every once in a while our paths converge again, and it's always a good thing.