Lawyers and the law have played a central role in politics since the beginning of Pakistan’s history. The founder of the country, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was a barrister—he mounted a series of successful arguments for how the 1947 separation from India would take place; at heart, Partition was a legal arrangement.

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And throughout the decades of Pakistan’s existence, lawyers have fought for the development of legislative and judicial institutions in opposition to military dictatorship and the existing bureaucratic rule.

One last note, I think the border agents are becoming increasingly suspicious of my brief three-hour trips to Montreal. The questions are getting more and more detailed and are being asked with an increasingly surly tone. On the way in, I was asked what I did for a living, what company I work for and where they were located. Then the agent quickly mixed in, “Do you have $10,000 in the car?” On the way back, the border agent asked me where the concert was, what street the club was located on, what were the cross streets and what roads I took to get to and from the club.

Brian’s story implies that US Immigration maintains a database of each citizen’s border crossing activities. It’s probably keyed by the the car’s license plate. The government’s doing this is probably not a problem on its own, though it does raise a civil libertarian flag—mostly because it suggests that although border guards are able to collect extensive information on when and how often a person crosses the US border, that by itself isn’t enough to warrant increased suspicion, and potentially raises a lot of false positives. To my mind, making brief trips to Canada every month or so does seem a little out of the ordinary, but on its own I’m not the sort of behavior that suggests nefarious activity. Yet the increased suspicion of the border guard, implied by his pressing questions, seem to suggest that such border-crossing jaunts are treated like that. Yet, Brian’s activity is really very ambiguous, and has a completely innocent explanation. If the guards had a little more information, they’d know that.

Remember when I posted legal photos to this site on at least a semi-regular basis? I thought I’d give that a try again. This picture was taken on at University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Law. Seems like a nice work space.

Oh, and the exclamation point title doesn’t have that much meaning. I just found it floated the song list to the top of my iTunes playlists.

• Race:in; Battles
• North American Scum; LCD Soundsystem
• She’s the One; Caribou
• A Paw In My Face; The Field
• Harnessed in Slums; Archers of Loaf
• I Turn My Camera On; Spoon
• Unless It’s Kicks; Okkervil River
• Ghostship; Menomena
• Your Asterisk; Halo Benders
• Camron’s New Color (Pt. 3); Professor Murder
• Take What You Take; Lily Allen
• New Girl; The Long Winters
• Last American Virgin; Oxford Collapse
• Carne Levare; The New Year
  Asleep At The Wheel; Working for a Nuclear Free City
• Is There A Ghost; Band of Horses
• Sun A.M.; Moonbabies

• Detects On My Affection; Peter Bjorn And John
• We’re Not Alone; Dinosaur Jr.
• Live Until I Die; Ass Ponys
• Soft & Warm; Voxtrot
• Thirteen; Big Star
• Your Favorite Thing; Sugar
• Lying In State; Superchunk
• Queen Of Cans And Jars; Guided By Voices
• Cold Days From The Birdhouse; The Twilight Sad
• Happy; The Rolling Stones
• The Start Of Something; Voxtrot
• Looking For Astronauts; The National
• Books Written For Girls; Camera Obscura
• Glad And Sorry; The Faces
• O2; Sleater Kinney
• Polar Opposites; Modest Mouse
• Anything You Want; Spoon
• Cedric’s War; The Besnard Lakes

As Goldwater later wrote, “It was a sad time for Jenkins’ wife and children, and I was not about to add to their private sorrow. Winning isn’t everything. Some things, like loyalty to friends or lasting principle, are more important.”

I can imagine the sort of personal turmoil this incident has created for the Senator’s family. That his colleagues have either abandoned him or have decided to openly attack him speaks volumes on their current lack of decency.

So, its been four whole months since I posted here. In that time I devoted myself to my job at the state house, involved got involved in a serious relationship with a girl from Worcester (Massachusetts, not Vermont), drafted more legislation and attended more judiciary committee meetings than I care to think about, found myself unemployed once again, and got involved with a recently-conceived Montpelier bike cooperative. Above you’ll see a picture of me at one of Freeride’s functions, washing my orange Bottecchia fixed gear.

Speaking of my Bottecchia, the bike has served me well over the past few months (after some serious upgrades—it’s quite a different bike from the one it was before). Fixed gear, it turns out, is definitely a new and interesting biking experience, and seems to be an interesting next step after recovering from my broken hip.

I also turned 31 with a small but important amount of fanfare (which came from my new girlfriend) traveled to Central Massachusetts on several weekends, and started the process of finding more work. I’m not sure what the next phase of my life is going to look like, and in the meantime I’ve really enjoyed once again being between things.

Someone posted a bunch of pictures from what looks like a summer vacation to Vermont back in the 1970’s. So great for so many different reasons. Unfortunately, there’s no tags or photo sets, so you have to dig through the set on your own.

I wish I understood the context of this photo, but I have very little to go on. There’s enough information, though, for me to say that it is law-related, if only vaguely.

In any event, I was just looking for an excuse to link to it here.

Did you know these existed? I didn’t.

Noted by Small Dog Electronics.

So it makes me wonder if maybe it’s something of a back door strategy on the part of the Bush administration. While everyone is screaming that this is just another attempt to coddle regulated industries, in reality what is happening is the Bush administration is taking down regulations by simply performing an impossible task incompetently.

Incidentally, this is a perfect example of micromanagers are really not effective leaders. They just can’t do the amount of work that is required to in order to exercise the amount of control their pathologies demand.

My sister just got back from a week-long trip to New Orleans, where she helped with post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. She’s been posting photographs from that trip to a rapidly growing flickr set, which is worth taking a look at.