From around the world wide web

I nearly always write original posts, but once in a while I like to share things from around the world wide web.  Let’s start with the incomparable and amazing Popehat and its coverage of the free speech issues at the University of Texas.  It turns out that some students didn’t like a conservative student group’s activities designed to raise awareness (I love that phrase) of immigration issues.  So not only did the academic community shame the conservative group—something that Popehat points out is the proper reaction to unpopular free speech—but many students are also asking the government to step in and punish the conservative group for exercising their free speech rights.  In a nutshell, Popehat points out how ignorant this is.  Don’t these students know that some day—or even today in some contexts—their own speech will be hurtful and unpopular to others?  Do they really want the government stepping in and censoring them?  When reading the post it struck me just how much some people rely on the government today.  They turn to it for nearly everything, even when their feelings are hurt because others are saying unpopular or offensive things.  Man-up, offended students of U.T.!  When you leave the academic bubble and, hopefully, get jobs, people will say and do things all the time to offend you.  Get used to it, and stop running to the government for your every (imagined) need.  Also from around the web . . .

The Duke Lacrosse accuser has been convicted of her own crime: second degree murder.  It’s crazy, though, how a person convicted of murder can get as few as 14 years in prison.  Here in Wisconsin, we routinely sentence people to decades in prison just for touching the butts of fifteen-year-olds.  It’s that mentality that helps us dwarf our neighbor to the west, Minnesota, in incarcerating people, as Michael O’Hear explains.

On the law school front, if current trends of declining enrollment (a good thing) and stagnating job opportunities (a bad thing) both continue, there will be enough law-related jobs available for new graduates by the year 2021.  But don’t worry, law grads of 2014-2020: this post claims that upon graduating with a JD, you’ll be able to get numerous other types of jobs, including that of CFO.  I’m not sure if this post is serious or not.  But as an MBA-CPA-JD who hopes to soon be leaving law and returning to the corporate finance-accounting job market, I just hope potential employers don’t hold my JD against me.

Finally, it’s always good to come full circle and end with Popehat.  On the humorous side, check out how Ken handles this annoying solicitation for web-linking, or some such thing.  The Legal Watchdog has no sponsors, advertisers, or commercial links (other than indirect links to my own two books) so, at the risk of sounding like Pierce Hawthorne, I really don’t understand how all of this internet stuff works.  But it doesn’t matter.  Popehat's hilarious post is worth the read.