My home town is being threatened by some wrong-headed people.

See here.  I'm not saying that Orange was Nirvana when I was growing up.  After all, it's located near Vidor, a hamlet that held its share of Klan rallies.  Vidor was so bad that, if one of us had a car that broke down there, we'd just walk away from the car, out of the city limits.  But I'd have thought that Orange, being "not-Vidor," would have the intelligence to avoid this whole "let's put up a Confederate monument right next to Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive" thing. 

I get that there's a freedom of speech issue here.  So does Orange's City Attorney.  But I hope to hell that there are protesters on site, day and night, to explain to the "Sons of Confederate Veterans" that most people actually think that erecting the monument is not the best depiction of the "history of the South."  The best cure for dumb, bigoted, wrong-headed speech is more speech.  Let's see what Orange's citizenry does.

Rutgers-Newark's law dean is right (updated).

Dean John Farmer came up with a nifty idea that he puts forth in today's New York Times (here):  have new law grads become apprentices for a couple of years, a la medical school residents.  His idea isn't new--others have proposed it as well--but he makes a good case for marrying the need to serve the middle class with the need to provide job training for law grads.

UPDATE:  Northwestern Law's Dean Daniel Rodriguez has also come out with a provocative and timely essay (here).  Ultimately, a lot of us are going to have to justify legal education in general and particularly in the third year.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas Morning News's article this morning about SMU Law Dean John Attanasio contains at least one whopper:  "In 2006, University of Houston Law Center Dean Nancy Rapaport was forced to resign when her law school plummeted in the U.S. News rankings."

Um, DMN?  You might want to call someone before writing something that's not correct.  If you'd called me, or checked my blog (see here), you'd have said something different in your story.

My mom was a reporter.  She got her facts right.  You should, too.

Newsflash: A Disney fanatic can detest the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland.

We had some serious problems with the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland, and we wrote to Disney's Customer Service Department on Sunday.  Today's Wednesday.  I'm still waiting for Disney's response.  If you know me, you know that I buy into the whole Disney experience.  I love the company--and I have, ever since my first visit to Disneyland after taking the California Bar.  Jeff & I are DVC (Disney Vacation Club) members, and I go to a Disney site at least twice a year.  (Jeff usually goes on one of these trips.)  So I tend to be pretty forgiving about minor problems.  This visit, though, wasn't about "minor" problems. 

• The room smelled like skunk when we checked in.  To housekeeping's credit, when we asked, the folks there got rid of the skunk smell.  Then the room smelled strongly of cleaner.
• It took more than a normal amount of time to reach anyone by phone:  room service, front desk, operator.  It shouldn't take three minutes to reach the operator or the front desk, especially during normal hours.
• The front desk got some basic information wrong about what was open at which times.
• When we checked out and said that we'd written to Customer Service because of some serious problems, the check-out person responded with "OK."  Not "I'm so sorry to hear that."  Not "Tell me what happened."  Just "OK."

We're lucky.  We used DVC points to stay there.  I can't imagine paying several hundred dollars a night for the room there.

Um, Disney?  So far, we're not impressed with your response.

I'll keep everyone posted.

UPDATE:  2/8/13--a very nice person from Disney Guest Relations called me, listened to my complaints, and was very, very helpful.  She restored my faith in Disney.  Although we still won't go back to the Grand Californian, we'll be happy to go back to the Disneyland Hotel.