It's not that much better at the "lower tier" law schools, either.

True story: I attended law school at a prominent public State University in the Southeast.

The bulk of the faculty was overwhelmingly liberal there as well.

My Conlaw professor: Spent his "probono" time working on Gay Right's legislation to advance in the State Legislature, and filing amicus briefs on behalf of the ACLU..

My Family Law Professor: Spent his legal practice on advancing the cause of Polygamy.

My torts professor: Spent his free time as an activist against tort reform.

My Legal Research and Writing professor: Her other class was "Feminist Legal Theory".

My Contracts professor: Was a conservative.

My Civil Procedure professor: Hung a portrait of Justice Brennan in his classroom. Routinely denounced Scalia as "brilliant but meanspirited".

Shakespeare was right.

That's probably a fair general statement for almost any university and almost any department.

McCarthy was right - there really are commies under every bed.

Well, we'll just have to shoot everyone who took law in a college in the US! That'll take care of the bastards. Sure, that'll get some of our guys, but it's for the good of the country. I'm afraid that means you and Allah will have to take one for the team. Sorry. I'll make sure you both get monuments -- nice war ones with statues and flags, not some girly "circle of comfort" with dreamcatchers and places to put your ylang-ylang scented votive candles. Unless you'd rather. Hey, I'm non-judgmental on things like that.

One of the more interesting break downs I've read lately was done by David Brooks on contributions to Bush v. Kerry by profession. For Academics it was an 11 to 1 ratio. For Librarians it was 223 to 1.

Librarians are the ones you gotta look out for. Here's a nice little essay by a librarian mentioning Brook's piece and the problem in his profession: The Loneliness of the Conservative Librarian

I wonder, Symes. I'm a library junkie. I love 'em. I considered becoming a librarian, until I discovered you had to have a Master's (in which case, why not get a real job? Like dental hygienist?).

I hardly ever visit libraries any more. What used to take hours of poring through card catalogs and combing the reference room and consulting the librarian is now a matter of leaning over and typing "nystagmus" into the Google toolbar.

As more and more source documents go online, I wonder about the long-term viability of libraries and librarians, except as repositories.

Also, I have no fucking idea why I said "nystagmus."

Weasel: I love libraries. Love all the books, the absolute 'not costin me a cent' to take them home and read at my pleasure thing. I feel like I'm screwing someone and learnin at the same time.

But paper, man. It's the paper. Can't stand staring at a screen, keeping my head and body in one spot for so long like monitors require - the comparative difficulty of turning pages. Squinting. Can't lie on my back. Etc...

Maybe one day when they get that electronic ink thing worked out, those paper-screens, but till then, I don't see paper going away. It's like all those visionaries who thought we'd do away with meals, be getting all our nutrients from super vitamin supplements or such. They forgot people like to eat. I suspect we similarly like the sensation of pape in our hands.

I'm addicted to books - have a few thousand at home and love browsing in bookstores and libraries. I was in the local library a couple of weeks ago and saw a display on banned books in honor of Banned Book Week or something like that. I'm not much in favor of banning or censorship, but the books on their list were almost all books with sexual and/or homosexual content that parents had asked be removed from school curriculums.

That doesn't seem to consititute 'banning' in the traditional sense, and I think it's perfectly reasonanble for parents to control their children's exposure to these materials. But there are no voices speaking up for the offended parents on the national stage - they're just cast as troglogytes by the libraries.

Dear geoff,

FASCIST!

That's a troglodytic fascist to you.

Paper for the long reads, for sure. Though I have faith we can't be that far from electronic ink. Or at least practical tablet PC's; if I could curl up in an armchair with it comfortably on my knee, I wouldn't mind so much if it were glowing rather than paper-and-ink-like.

But one special appeal of libraries was the concentration of a gigantic breadth of information in one place, and the net has already well eclipsed that. I went looking for something recently and discovered the Edinburgh Archives (including photos and trial transcripts) is painstakingly being put online. Or this from the British Library -- using a Flash dingus to leaf through 14 of their rarest manuscripts. If this continues exponentially, as it should, I might just die of information heaven.

Also, small regional libraries have been doing us all a great disservice by getting rid of older books to make room for trendy new releases. I went looking for a copy of Fantastic Voyage in my neighborhood library a few years ago and discovered they had no copies of it, or of so many other other sci-fi books that blew my infant mind. Yet there were several copies on the shelf of Our Vaginas, Our Selves...or whatever.

If a few splodydopes went off in libraries I suspect that might alter their views.

Its easy to support moonbats and dumb shit when your life is quiet and peaceful all day. Less easy to after you spend a few hours sponging blood and brains off the stacks and computer screens.

Also, small regional libraries have been doing us all a great disservice by getting rid of older books to make room for trendy new releases.

The Troy NY public library used to have arguably the best older collection in all of NY State. It was a place of wonder for me as a tyke 40 years ago. Lots of stuff going as far back as early 1800's. Troy used to be respectable center of education in the northeast being home to RPI and Sage, and the benneficiary of the largess of the Burden Iron Works donations at the height of the industrial revolution.

It was all sold off for pennies a volume in fund raising drives starting in the late 60's and continuing through today. Book dealers and collectors would come from hundreds of miles around when the Troy library went on stupidity binges. Most of that wonderous legacy is gone now but for a few well hidden scraps. The only thing left of the past now is the building itself.

The bastards sold off the chronicles of civilization for a fist full of jack. This is what happens when you put modern day barbarians in charge of the records of civilization.

It's a tragedy, Avenger. For years, I snatched up all the books that looked even marginally salvagable from the "Buy Our Precious Cultural Legacy for Pennies" rack at the several local libraries I frequent. I paid $.50 for an excellent 1924 hardcover book on wall stencilling (like I care!) a scant few years before stencils came back in vogue in a big way. Isn't holding on to this stuff for us what we expect from public libraries? But, no. They are now the sacred keepers of books I can get for $5 on Amazon's Buy It Used, while my downstairs looks like it was personally decorated by the Collyer Brothers.

Yeah, go on. Google them. Or Wikipedia it. It's worth it :)

I love our library. Sure, it does the trendy "Banned Books Week" crap with pictures of freakin' Toni Morrison all over the place, but it's full of books.

A good selection of the old and the new stuff - the city (with some serious help from Stephen and Tabitha King) built a huge addition onto the library a few years back that enabled them to keep the old books instead of having to ditch them to make room for the new stuff.

I just finished reading The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. Very good book. That man can write.

You don't suppose it could be that the more intelligent people end up teaching at the more elite law schools do you? Hey, maybe the more intelligent people are more liberal minded? Wow now that's an interesting idea. Gee I never thought of that before. I guess that's because I hang out on the web sites of morons. Huh?

LOL! Damn, Dwarf, that is one airtight argument you just made! Your uneven use of punctuation is also very cute - irony, right?

Hey, maybe the more intelligent people are more liberal minded?

If liberals are so damned smart, why can't they convince morons to vote for them?

Then of course there's the theory:

Those who can - do.
Those who can't - teach.
Those who can't teach - administrate.

willing dwarf:You don't suppose it could be that the more intelligent people end up teaching at the more elite law schools do you? Hey, maybe the more intelligent people are more liberal minded? Wow now that's an interesting idea. Gee I never thought of that before. I guess that's because I hang out on the web sites of morons. Huh? I would be more impressed with your arguement if there wasn't a political and cultural bias in selection of Professors. I know from personal experience that college professors as a group are much more closed minded and bigoted than the average high school graduate. They as a group are very much like the KKK in their inability to relate to cultures, politics and ideas outside of their own. That is why they have such fear of and antagonism towards religion, traditional marriage and patriotism. The fact is that between 80% and 90% of college professors are like Karl Marx: fully capable of instituting inhumane economic and political policies that kill 100's of millions of human beings, creating gulags and death camps by the hundreds and thousands for no better reason than their incapacity to relate to anything or anyone outside their little group. As professor Marx advised in the communist manifesto written in the 1850's-- kill all the bourgeois. There has been no greater disaster for mankind than ideas and advice received from college professors. So thanks but no thanks. The world could easily do without college professors and their prejudices, hatreds and extreme politics.

My definition of a liberal is one who can hold opposite and opposing opinions at the same time.

When you off me, Andrea, please make my Memorial like the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Detroit.
I like my public art to be big and obvious.

Done! It'll make your mama proud.

Hey, maybe the more intelligent people are more liberal minded?

If so, they are as secretive about their abilities as they are open about their affinities.

You don't suppose it could be that the more intelligent people end up teaching at the more elite law schools do you? Hey, maybe the more intelligent people are more liberal minded? Wow now that's an interesting idea. Gee I never thought of that before. I guess that's because I hang out on the web sites of morons. Huh?

Boy, some people will go to amazingly pathetic lengths to inflate their self-esteem, won't they?

I did a post a few weeks back about going to the library for Steinbeck. I found a small handful of books by him, and rows and rows exclusively dedicated to Danielle Steele.

But on the plus side, I found out we have a movies section where I can check out Hellseeker for free, so, you know, it's a compromise.

Not surprising since most of these collages are liberal and left-wing anyway