What Law Schools Won’t Tell You

The Article: Law School Tuition Rises As Salaries Shrink And Other Things To Law Schools Won’t Tell You in Huffington Post Money.

The Text: 1. “Lawyers are a dime a dozen.”

After graduating from California Western School of Law in 2005, Kathryn Tokarska sent dozens of resumes to law firms. Prior to attending law school, she worked at investment firms, so she was hoping to land a job at a securities law firm or another related field that could use her experience. Instead, says Tokarska, the only position she was offered after graduating was a $10 per hour part-time clerkship. Knee deep in debt and unable to find a decent job, she opened her own law office in San Diego in 2008. “I thought if I got a higher degree, I’d have a better chance to get a job, but that’s not what happened,” she says.

Tokarska isn’t alone. This year, around 45,000 students are graduating law school — the highest number ever, according to the American Bar Association. But there are only about 28,000 positions for lawyers that are available, according to Economic Modeling Specialists, a labor market analysis firm. The latest survey data available by the National Association for Law Placement shows that about 88% of law students who graduated in 2010 were employed by February 2011 — the lowest rate since 1996 and down from a peak of 92% in 2007. And almost a third of the graduates known to be employed were not working in a legal position that required passing the Bar exam.

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The New Stupid

Well, at least your bigotry will be in color.

No “Change” In Obama’s Drone Doctrine

The Article: Don’t Look For “Change” In Obama’s Drone Doctrine by Savannah Cox in The Speckled Axe.

The Text: We see it in the headlines every day: Obama will be on the right side of history. In the social stratosphere, he righted himself recently via “coming out” of his own moderate and pragmatic closet in favor of gay marriage (albeit at the state level). To justly associate himself with the “99%” majority, Obama aligned himself with aging plutocratic dissenter Warren Buffett while his wife Michelle sat next to Buffett’s now-famous secretary at the State of the Union Address. Meanwhile, his fumbling attempt at affordable healthcare—one whose roots can easily be traced to the work of none other than presidential hopeful Mitt Romney—awaits its fate this June. This is the hope and change that Shepard Fairey so colorfully promised back in 2008, right?

Not necessarily. Amid the flurry of Obama’s so-called “novel” policies and plays on the political chess board, many of the same strategies of fact manipulation, deceit and political posturing spring eternal. No, he’s not Bush—and thank God for that. But in terms of counter-terrorism, when the Obama administration’s strategies employ the same disregard for dehumanized civilians via drone strikes and the simultaneous generation of misleading nomenclature to soften the political blowback that would occur if, God forbid, Americans really knew how their tax dollars were being spent in the name of “freedom,” one has to wonder how different the two presidents actually are. Yes, we’re scheduled to exit Afghanistan and Iraq for good in the coming years, but when the administration’s drone war only emblazons the cause of the same groups against whom American troops fought extensively and expensively for nearly a decade, what have we really accomplished?

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Chomsky On Modern Capitalism

In other words, make someone else foot the bill at all costs–success or fail.

Are You Addicted To Facebook?

The Article: Can These 6 Questions Tell You If You’re Clinically Addicted to Facebook? by Brian Fung in The Atlantic.

The Text: American medical discourse is chock full of addictions these days. There’s video game addiction. Porn addiction. Gambling addiction. Internet addiction.

And of course: Facebook addiction. At least, that’s according to Norwegian researcher Cecilie Schou Andreassen, who says people who can’t get enough of the social network show many of the same signs of withdrawal and mood swings associated with gambling junkies.

Although Facebook is not a chemical like alcohol or cocaine, she said in an email to The Atlantic, Facebook users can fit the criteria for addiction that are applied to other things.

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