The Agrinautica

   Congratulations to Tim Coady, the new Chief Justice of ASUCD! He should be being confirmed approximately right now at Senate. I will remain an associate Justice for exactly a week until I hit four years on the bench on the 25th.

   The Case 37 hearing has been postponed a week to the 31st. It has been officially announced that Case 39 was rejected. A Case 40 has been filed today.

   An Aggie reporter was apparently calling around trying to talk to someone on the Court. She called three other justices (who all asked me what they should say), but never called me. Silly reporters. I'm still alive, and more available for comment than ever before! So find my number.
   And The Aggie does a whole retrospective about ASUCD President Holloway's retirement and term in ASUCD, but the end of my much much longer involvement doesn't get a mention, I see how it is. I guess you don't be Chief Justice for the adoring fans.


   Last week I was in Davis. It was cold.


   Then I took the train all night right on down to San Diego. Kristy & I went to Sea World (An Anhauser-Busch Amusement Park!) on the tickets I got her for Christmas. We got year passes to the park (which cost as much as one day tickets, I was so confused trying to find out what the catch was) and backstage tours. The backstage areas we got to see consisted of two locations: the first one was kind of decent it was the back pools where they put animals that aren't currently on exhibit for one reason or another; the second was a lameo fake backstage area with some baby sharks -- baby sharks are cool but we'd seen simiilar things on normal exhibition at Monteray or Long Beach or both.
   Anyway, Sea World was extremely commercialized compared to the zoos and other aquariums we'd been to. They tried to make the arctic animal exhibit into a ride practically. Nevertheless, we got a better view of the polar bears than we've gotten at the SD zoo, and they had other fun animals the other places didn't have.
   The shamu show was really retarded. They tried to make it into some story about some kid who "wanted to connect" with the animals or some crap and... I dunno it was really lame. They kept showing this dumb kid on the huge telescreen rather than the actual whales.
   One of the most interesting things however was when we were just observing the orcas, the young one was toying with the birds. She'd spit a bit of fish out so it floated just a foot above her on the surface while she stayed below it. When a bird would try to get it she'd try to nip the bird. The second day we went the orca had feathers sticking out of her mouth.


   In other news, the legendary Diedrichs off La Paz will be closing down forever on Monday. When it reopens, it will be a starbucks. )=


   I've been back in Mission Viejo during the week, but I'm about to go back down to San Diego to take care of Kristy after she has a dental procedure tomorrow morning.


Picture of the Day

Capybara!

   I am about to leave for San Diego, from where a number of us will head down to Porto Nuevo, Mexico, for our traditional New Years adventure (though its always been in the snow at Tahoe previously). Expect tales of adventure upon our return.

   Since the Court is always in session and the presiding officer must always be available for interested parties to correspond with (and since I am somehow STILL the Chief Justice), I formally temporarily delegate full authority to the Vice Chief Justice, Tim Coady. On any account, interested parties should always cc emails to both the CJ and VCJ; or in this case send them to the VCJ and senior justice, Joe Harney. For that matter, in general, I recommend people always send any important email correspondence to at least two persons, because emails have been known to get lost, or if one reciever drops the ball on it than someone else at least knows about it. Its a redundant failsafe if you will.

   While I'm on the subject, yes I'm Chief Justice until replaced, which they didn't get around to doing last quarter. I will continue to stay involved until replaced, but the man (/woman) on the ground is going to be the VCJ; a position I've recommended they continue to rotate through every two weeks until there's a new Chief Justice for the same reason as before -- to give everyone experience running things and allow the CJ aspirants an opportunity to showcase how awesome they might be at it.


Picture of the Day

   Actually the main reason I decided to make an lj post just now is because earlier today I discovered that Yahoo Photos finally allows one to download a full size version of ones own pictures. In ancient times I used yahoo photos as my main online site for posting pictures, and after my computer crashed a few times it became the only place a number of my pictures could be found electronically -- but much to my consternation I could only get back really small versions of the pictures. But now one can! I've only reposted two of the affected pictures so far, but when I have time I'll replace the rest.
   This is a castle somewhere in the middle of Slovakia, April 1999.

The ASUCD Gulag
   After a 2+ hour debate in which two people cried, the ASUCD Senate finally came to an agreement: they would fork out $1,000 to send the controversial Steven Ostrowski to do hard labour in another country.


Indictment Act
   Judicial Proposal 7 was finally passed (12-0-0) as Senate Bill 35. To have the ASUCD Senate consider the removal of a Justice:
   Formerly required a motion by a Senator (no need for a 2nd even), Justice would be told 24 hours in advance that they were being considered for removal (they need not be told (and usually weren't) anything more specific about the charges than that it is a "personnel matter") & that they have a right to make the closed session on them open;
   Henceforth (assuming President Holloway signs the Bill) a motioning Senator will have to write up charges citing (i) the specific bylaw or subsection of the judicial code of ethics allegedly violated, (ii) the specific action or inaction the Defendant Justice allegedly committed and the specific time and place if applicable, (iii) the general evidence or witnesses who would be able to attest that it is reasonable to believe these allegations, and (iv) an argument or explanation that if believed these allegations would render the Defendant Justice unfit for their position; and the validity of these charges must be confirmed by the Internal Affairs Commission; if approved by the IAC, the motioning Senator then may proceed as before (24 hour notice etc), but the defendant Justice shall of course be given the approved charge sheet and may only be charged in accordance with such.
   Unfortunately, when I think about the spurious charges made against ASUC Berkeley Chief Justice Sonya Banerjee earlier this quarter, they might have slipped through even the new indictment process here,* but at least for example the spurious "just to talk' impeachment hearing Sen Birdsall called against Justice Harney & myself last year would have been right out.

   Anyway, needless to say the passage of SB35(2006) should actually make a huge improvement in the independance of the ASUCD Judiciary. It was a very positive note for my last ASUCD meeting, ever.


Using E
   Every time Sen Alexandra Frick's name is called I think my name is being called since "Frick" is a very very common mispronouncement of "Fricke." In fact, our names are in all probability etymologically linked and we share a 16th century Prussian ancestor. I am rather disappointed, however, that Alex's ancestors gave up the fight to explain that the "e" is not silent. (Though my own ancestors missplaced an accent mark that was over the "e" somewhere in Brazil)


Advising Advisor: Rein in Reign or Resign
   The Aggie ran an editorial yesterday supporting Elections Chairman Leathers' call for ASUCD Advisor Tucker to change his behaviour or resign. This comes a day after a front page article reporting on the situation, which was initiated the day previous by a livejournal post on the subject by Leathers.
   Article ends with "Tucker has little ASUCD experience and would do well to pay some respect to those students who have been active members of the association longer than he has."
   On any account, rumour I'm hearing is that Tucker was never planning on being the advisor for more than two years, before scampering off to law school. I think its kind of silly to hire an advisor for so short a period of time that they'll never have more experience than the senior student leaders (previous advisor Eric Sanchez was around less than a year). I have a brilliant idea for our next advisor though: former Sen Lamar Heystek.
   I'd be available to take the job presumably, but I'm in no need for such a demotion ;) (For Heystek though it would be an appropriate "day job" to support him while on city council (which does not pay I believe)). But really I plan on not being around here for the rest of eternity ... though on the plus side it would be the ultimate last laugh on Vicki Swett if I ended up with her job.

Quote of the Day: "I bet you never thought I'd be contemplating filing two back-to-back cases!" - Kai "No Need for a Judiciary" Savaree-Ruess.


Year Ago Today: Unqualified Candidates Scandal Breaks - News of the Unqualified Candidates Scandal first breaks. Also, I'm quoted in a student government court opinion in Texas.

   The Case 34 Plaintiff Brief is unchanged from last week, and the Defence Brief just came in. I recommend you read them, they're concise (1.5 and 1 pages respectively) and its relatively easy to grasp what the case is about and therefore rather what exactly it is we do in the ASUCD Supreme Court.


   The Hearing is scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec 6th) at 7:10pm in the MU Mee Rm Moot Court, UCD Law School.


   In other news, The Aggie published an editorial ("Sanders' Motives, Integrity Questionable"* today declaring former Lead Senator / Focus VP Candidate Jon "Independant" Sanders to have a shadiness factor of approximately nine**.
   Sanders belongs to the same fraternity (Delta Chi) that brought us Sen Thomas "Loopholes" Lloyd & Justice Daniel "Retroactive" Raff.

* Will someone please do something about the paragraph-long Aggie URLs?!
** Number nine not explicitly stated in the editorial, but clearly implied.

   The Case 34, Savaree-Ruess vs. Carnes et Al, Hearing has been postponed until Wednesday next week pursuant to a motion by the Defence.

   I stopped by the Student Government Administrative Office (SGAO) today and found Plaintiff Savaree-Ruess, Defence Counsel Powers, Associate Defence Counsel Harms and ASUCD Advisor Tucker all hanging out. Ruess said that his team (which includes Defence Counsel Greg "Big City Lawyer" Russel) is already working on one-liners to use during the Hearing. Powers vowed to be equally prepared for the battle of wits.
   Powers has also created an "ASUCD Legal Defence Team" facebook group. Clearly, the legal armsrace is on!

   Anyway, during my twenty hours of driving this past week, as I said I had altogether too much time to ponder the deep questions in life ... such as how to make ASUCD even better! I came up with two brilliant insights:


Deliberate Oral Exams
   The actual reason I was lurking around the third floor was to pitch this idea to Tucker.
   Basically, I was pondering how the interviewing process for prospective justices could be made to better highlight the skills one wants justices to be selected based upon. The normal interview process only works if the interviewers ask brilliantly insightful questions, and even then they might get at the mentality of the Justice, which is important, but it leaves utterly no guidance as to whether tehy will be an involved and effective Justice.
   Now the way the US State Department examines prospective foreign service officers is, after making an initial cut in written exams, they put a dozen or so applicants in a room ... and have them fight to the death! Not really but they make them work on some theoretical project in which they'll need to compromise and work together.
   And so I was thinking, what if we get the judicial applicants together in groups of nine provide them with a hypothetical case, and watch them deliberate! The people currently mandated to be on the interviewing committee observe these deliberations and can then make selections on a basis of effectiveness, insightfulness, judicial mentality, and all kinds of other relevant informations!

   I pitched it to Tucker and he thought it was a great idea and could even be implimented for the interviews that are coming up asap. He's still got to pitch it to President Holloway though, who as chair of the interviewing committee is the one who decides. But I'm very excited about it. Time to rustle up a case.

   And hey take note UC Merced, I know you've been stalled for weeks on the judicial interview process!


Fully-Automatic Recall
   Currently, at universities nationwide, there is a problem with elections. That being, that (1) if a candidate gets disqualified, they very frequently sue anyone and everyone until the right people roll over and let them take office, since no one but the candidate themselves cares about it enough to go to court over it; and (2) the candidate invariably cites a misguided interpretation of "democracy" or "will of the people" to support their position. It has been of little avail to advise them that its not "will of the people" if they had an unfair opportunity to influence "the people" or "the people" didn't know critical information about their character. But I came up with a solution that utterly resolves both these problems.
   Keep the system of "campaign violations" or "censures" which are given in various amounts for various severities of violations. BUT where currently a certain number mandate disqualification (three in ASUCD, five at Berkeley I believe), replace disqualification with automatic recall. Basically, the candidate still gets elected into office, but a recall election is immediately scheduled for them the following week.
   In this matter, it can be conclusively determined whether "the People" would overlook their indiscretions, and I can't imagine a lawsuit overcoming this second voicing of the "will of the people."

A Day in the Life of ASUCD Senate
   Still in Senate, Senator Zamora just cited "hearsay" about what a business manager allegedly said about a financial bill, which I thought was funny. Anyway, we're talkign about about a bill to spend $11,500 on security cameras for the Bike Barn. For unclear reasons this bill didn't formally go through Business & Finance Commission (B&F) so people are talking about it at great length here.
   Earlier the Senate discussed spending $1,600 so people can go to the "Reaffirming Ethnic Awareness & Community Harmoney" conference. The Bike Barn bill just passed 9-?-? over the B&F Chair's mild objections.
   Bill for $300 for World AIDS Day shirts. Later we'll be discussing the Justice-Impeachment-Indictment Bill (formerly Judicial Proposal 7, now Senate Bill 23), and the bill to change the wording of the Senate agenda item under which the Chief Justice makes reports. Then a constitutional amendment and a bill placing it in the bylaws regarding the proposed "Outreach Assembly" will be discussed. That should be interesting, its gone through every commission, and it would kind-of create a lower-house of the Senate.

   8:36 - senate is now debating whether "miseducated" is a word
   8:51 - Senator "Tiny" Sanders: "I'm disappointed none of these t-shirts are in extra large. Big people also believe in fighting AIDs! But if it costs more don't worry about it, I'll go work out so I can fight AIDs, or wear a tight shirt!
   8:55 - The passing of the t-shirt bill puts the Senate budget in the red!
   9:38 - a bill reallocating the money formerly given to UCSA just passed, so the budget is no longer in the red. Now the Office of External Affairs is proposing we hire a professional lobbying firm for $15,000 a year (a company that usually charges $30,000 a year). This will of course be coming from the money that formerly went to the UCSA. This company will research education related legislation for us, lobby for us, and train 20 students a year for us. Sounds like it really kicks the ass of our former use of the money.
   10:37 - Kevin Powers (Executive Staff) - "I feel like its Mount Olympus up here ... and some people just can't claim it" (talking about the Outread Assembly now)
   11:07 - Senator Deepek "I want to include some kind of clause or.. quasi-clause..." (it was even funnier at first because I thought he said "clausie-clause")
   11:21 - Senator Higgens "The corruptability of this proposed body will . be . the . downfall . of . this . association." (still talking about the Assembly.)
   12:32 - The Bill & Constitutional Amendment to create the Assembly have passed.
   12:50ish - JP7/SB23 finally comes up, which is the bill I've been waiting for. Things start out good, with two senators speaking very favourably of it, and Ostrowski speaking against (which is in fact a good thing, as Senators tend to rally against whatever he's saying). Then two senators spoke skeptically and Max Mikolanis, who's the author since I am one of nine people in the world who can't be,* got cold feet and withdrew the bill. Next time I'm putting Jabba the Hutt as the author and myself as the author-designee.
   01:10am - Meeting over. I've spent 17 of the last 29 hours at student government meetings.

*ASUCD Justices are forbidden from writing legislation, but non-ASUCD members aren't. Saddam Hussein could write an ASUCD bill, but I can't. At the time they made this rule I tried to point out that it is NOT a violation of seperation of powers if I can write legislation since its the ability to PASS legislation that is unique to the Senate (again, since even Augusto Pinochet can write ASUCD legislation), and that unless they think I could unfairly cause them to pass it through some kind of jedi mind tricks, there's absolutely no reason to prevent me from writing legislation. This was part of the origin of the "jedi mind tricks" epitaph which eventually got stuck to my name (for example I was put on the fake election ballot as "Kris 'Jedi Mind Tricks' Fricke").

   Anyway, this entry is about my farewell address.

( My Farewell Speech )

Unexcused Behaviour
   Tuesday's opinion section in the Cal Aggie had some lulz, with a guest opinion from Kai saying the Aggie blew the altercation out of proportion on one side, and an editorial from the Aggie editorial board saying Kai's behaviour was totally inappropriate ("Juvenile Behaviour Unacceptable" specifically) on the other side.
   Incidently, if Kai's editorial was supposed to be the apology he promised the Aggie he'd make, I'm not sure he ever got around to saying he was sorry. I can't double check, because for some reason it isn't on the webpage anymore, but from my recollection it was much more of a justification of his actions and an attack against all who would say otherwise than anything resembling an apology. At the very least, it smacked of attrition (regret that one was caught or punished) rather than contrition (regret because one realizes ones actions were wrong).


Court Today
   Anyway, two Court cases were filed on Monday morning. They have been designated Case 33 & Case 34. But I don't like people to get all in a dither over the very act of filing a case so I'm not going to go into any further detail on the cases until we've decided whether to accept them or not.
   Agenda for tonight's Court meeting (8pm, ASUCD Conference Rm) includes, provisionally in this order: Case 33, Case 34, Judicial Proposal 7, Other Proposal 1*, fieldtrip to Berkeley right after our meeting?, election of an Inter-Collegiate Judicial Federation Liaison, & Judicial Directive 13.
   *OP1 = the proposed change of Senate agenda item "announcement of new ASUCD Court cases and reading of prior week’s verdict(s)" to "announcement of new ASUCD Court cases and reading of prior week’s verdict(s) and Court announcements." Personally I think as long as we don't have "Controller Report & announcement of any new financial decisions" on the agenda we shouldn't have a sentence telling us exactly what to tell the Senate either. But since Internal Affairs Commission Chairman Rivera's question to me about that was only rhetorical he didn't want to hear that from me I guess, jerk. (=
   Tomorrow at Senate I will be making my farewell speech, and the Senate will be discussing JP7 & OP1 (which will both be assigned an SB# by then).

   In other news, the impeachment of Chief Justice Banerjee is scheduled for tonight down in Berkeley. As I mentioned, a bunch of us are thinking about going down. I'd like to laud Beetlebeat's excellent coverage of their Senate's antics: Vice President Gupta claims Senate can use powers constitution reserves for Court; Former Defendant Gupta Denies Conflict of Interest in Chairing Impeachment

In Other News
   After extensive research and testing, I have determined that any kind of soup tastes better with graded cheese added, and the vast majority of them also benefit from the addition of sour cream.
   On that note, my food selection has improved. When I was first released from the dorms to become a feral undergraduate student, I lived on ramen and macaroni & cheese. After like two years of that I settled on a steady diet of salami-sandwiches. Lately, however, I've been getting a selection of canned soups, & chili. Also some hot dogs which I cook in the toaster oven (boiled hotdogs are kind of a travesty). And most shocking of all, I got a big back of lettuce & some italian dressing last time I was at the store and have been devouring salad with my dinner! So long scurvy!!


Picture of the Day

   Okay that was so fun last week, I'm going to once again do a general summary of our Court meeting minutes, so you can all marvel at what an august body we are.

8:10 - We have quorum with five justices, but Justice Coady is running late so Vice Chief Harney, who is presiding, holds off calling to order. While we are meeting informally Justice Wheat urges us all to vote no on Proposition 90, saying it will in effect allow the government to seize by imminent domain a lot of lands that would otherwise be protected environmental areas. Justice Harney disagreed, and it went back and forth until someone else (jokingly) suggested they schedule a debate in the coffee house.
   Next I announced my distress at seeing the Wikipedia article of the day declaring that .999... equals exactly 1. Particularly alarming, at least two of the proofs offered were very easy to follow and seemed compelling. I, however, remain suspicious that the problem is with our math system and not reality.
8:18 - Meeting called to order. We discuss the latest developments in the ASUC Berkeley scandal, discuss the case we discussed last week just a little more (as Harney had been absent at the time and had some thoughts). It is proposed that for further practice and to really hash out our thoughts on the subject we will cobble together a brief unofficial opinion on our take on the case - Justices Wheat & Coady volunteer to head this.
   We unanymously accept the Senate's recommendation that "Student" be stricken from the Judicial Codes where it erroniously says "Student Court." We discuss who will Vice Chief for the next two weeks, in accordance with our Partitioned Vice-Chiefship Plan, and parli pro starts to get a bit wacky. Coady: "Lets move on to the next agenda item then, nominations for Vice Chief" Harney: "Alright its moved that we take nominations for Vice Chief, do I have a second?" Coady: "I second" Harney: "you can't second, you moved!" Coady: "No, I recommended, YOU moved, so I can second!" We were of course joking, we're not that anal-retentive. Coady declined a nomination, Wheat was nominated and accepted uncontested as the new Vice Chief (for the next two weeks).
   Then we got into a discussion as to when exactly one is impeached. We know that an impeachment that is not successful is still an impeachment (for example I was impeached three times but never removed), but the Chief Justice before me resigned the morning of her impeachment, so was she technically impeached?
   Harney brought up that he'd talked to Student Judicial Affairs and they had said they might consider transferring review of parking ticket appeals to us. While this seems at first kind of an odd thing to add to our repetoire, a lot of Chief Justices at other universities I've talked to have mentioned having such a duty as well, and I think it might be a good addition to our role, didn't seem to have any major drawbacks (other than increased workload and potentially less interesting cases, but I think we could deal), and students would probably feel better about appealing their parking tickets to us than to faceless SJA droids. We were all interested in having Harney look into this further.
8:50ish - Meeting adjourned.


   In other news, the ASUCD Bill to formally remove us from UCSA has been written and introduced I believe. It was written by none other than former UCSA Chair Brent Laabs.
   Also, regarding the Berkeley scandal, apparently the attempt to pilfer the ASUC Berkeley treasury has been dropped from the Senate Bill. Now all it does is say that everyone should work on better bylaws. Now there's a shocking new policy. Maybe we should legislate that we should legislate as well!


Completely Unrelated Picture of the Day

Tom's catmom instincts kick in

   At our Court meeting last Tuesday I was giving a history lesson on the follies of "The Reverend" Tiqula "My Friends Call Me Half-Man Half-Amazing" Bledsoe. When I happened to mention that I too am a reverend, since the Universal Life Church will ordain anyone, several other Court members immediately went to the website (we had multiple laptops present, since we're a particularly advanced body) and got ordained during our meeting. I think we're going to form our own church.


   Anyway, the Administrative Office (SGAO) does not yet have the minutes from the IAC meeting last week where Kai-romwell made the original presentation on how ASUCD doesn't need a Court. But thats okay, because I have the minutes anway.
   The relevant portion is only a page, I shall reproduce it here, with my own commentary in bracketed nonitallics.

IAC Minutes, 06-05-15
( You're never alone when minutes are being taken )

   And I still think it was a serious breach of good faith that Kai came to IAC with the intention of making this presentation without notifying the Court.

   Round III will take place at the IAC meeting next week, on Tuesday, 5pm, De Carli Room. Should be interesting to all those interested in ASUCD, law, or philosophy...


Director of External Affairs James Schwab reads the IAC minutes during a Court meeting.
He thinks they're kind of ridiculous.
Justice Harney holds a copy of the Federalist Papers in the foreground.
And thats newly appointed Justice Kevin Powers on the left.

   So The Aggie told me that they were just waiting for me to explain the case at Senate before they covered it. I explained the case at Senate last Thursday. Today the Aggie article on that Senate meeting ran (which I can't link to at the moment because the Aggie webpage won't load). The article talks at length about recent unusual expenditures of $1,500+ for speakers and seperate graduation ceremonies for various ethnic groups, but only at the very end mentions "also they discussed the constitutional amendment and some resolutions." Clumping the resolutions together as "some resolutions" may be forgivable, but I would think a constitutional amendment is worth at least reporting the general subject.
   And of course, there was no mention at all of the Court case. I'm not sure this Court case has gotten a single mention in the Aggie ever. Justice dies in silence. Darth Lloyd surely loves the Aggie.


   Man I hate Mondays, I'm on campus from 8am to 11pm, with two two hour breaks.


   I'm trying desperately to figure out how to play movies on my computer so I can review them at ease while writing my papers for The Dark Ages in Film class (HIS121A). I've tried downloading several different things on various people's suggestion but no luck. Any recommendations?

Picture of the Day

Kristy chillaxes with Daisy, my grandparents-in-law (aunt's parents)'s dog