The girls' play starts tonight. They're not in it until tomorrow (the school does two "casts," because so many kids are involved - each cast does two performances), but we're going tonight, and I am working at it. So the fun begins.

Therefore, school (mine) is on the back burner starting .... NOW! I am home (at 10:18 a.m., after my 8:00 class). I decided to take a day off from the gym b/c it's gray and soggy outside, and I am exhausted, and yesterday was discouraging. I thought I'd rather take a day to rest, and then go tomorrow re-invigorated. I also took a longer bike ride home to compensate.

I brought my IP book home, but I'm not too sure I'll be doing much other than staring at the spine. The house is a mess and my parents are coming. I'd like to spend some time cleaning.

I'm picking the girls up pretty early both today and tomorrow so they have some at-home time before heading off to the school until 9 p.m.

It is not very fortuitous that their standardized testing week is the same week as their play. They're getting the "sleep, sleep, sleep!" message from school, but the play is tonight, and will last probably until 9:30. I'm actually concerned for J, b/c ever since she was sick 2 weeks ago, she is just tired all the time! I am considering having Beloved swing by the school after he gets out of work to pick J up from the play - but I know that will feel like torture to her. And logistically, I don't know how he'd actually get his hands on her. I'll be working back stage, she'll be sitting in the "kid section" and it will generally be pretty difficult.

One last law-school thing - my security/liberty class took a turn for the better today. We had a really good discussion about whether or not government agents should be going to public meetings, or accessing otherwise public information (i.e., google) without any sort of legal standard being required. I was "on call" to play an FBI agent, arguing that of course we should.

What is funny is how many times I actually believed in my argument (especially since I tend to not believe in 'terrorism'). How can you ban an FBI agent from an open-to-the-public meeting? I don't know that you can, or should. Any more than you should ban liberals from meetings of conservative groups. Does the fact that I'm a Democrat who believes in gun control mean that I should be BANNED from an NRA meeting which is open to the public? A members-only meeting, sure - don't invite me. But if you're going to advertise around town for a meeting at Fanueil Hall, you can't stop me at the door because you saw a John Kerry sticker on my bike as I rode up.

I think it's very different if the FBI agent is surreptitiously collecting information beyond than what is being voluntarily given -- you know, funky CTU technology that can scan retnas and find out social security numbers or something. I am also uncomfortable with photographs being taken for the purpose of getting identifying information on the participants - but just going to a meeting? I take issue with the idea that it should be banned more than I do with it happening!

When the conversation shifted, however, to an FBI agent attending a Mosque ... I was a bad FBI agent. I just couldn't justify the religious profiling. I was eventually pushed into saying that okay - they can go to a large group meeting - but I didn't like it. And I don't think that you can take away the profiling aspect by saying, "oh, I'll go to a temple and a church, too."

This is what I wanted from this class ... some squirming, some exploring of where our comfort zones are, and why. I hadn't been getting it until today.

Labels: kids, law school, weekends

posted by Zuska @ 10:18 AM

1 Comments:

At Thursday, March 22, 2007 1:16:00 PM, Anonymous said…

what if the fbi agent was muslim and he went into the mosque, does that change things?

if we hold that places of worship are tax exempt does that also mean they have special protections that other open-meeting places have? because i have a HUGE problem giving a tax dodge to secret meeting places that are not open to all.

i'm probably not making sense of this, but if you're going to argue that the fbi can go to open meetings then i don't see the problem. unless religious enterpises are some sort of secret societies...