We’re liveblogging the trial now – snark edition.
Livebloggers – Alex Norris, Matt Kupfer, Jon Muchin, and myself. We’ll be blogging in the comments.
This is a project unaffiliated with the petitioners, defense, judges, or whatever. We’re just providing an alternative, hopefully more hilarious liveblog here.
Check out Emily Dunning’s liveblog below for the “official Innermost Parts take”.
—
OK, so the petitioners (UJ-speak for prosecution) keep bringing up this claim that Lev and Alex didn’t recuse themselves when they brought up the SMR, and that its wrong, since they happen to be members of DFA. This line of reasoning is wrong. Lev and Alex are the Senators of the class of 2011 and represent the entire class. They were elected on a platform of, in part, supporting such events, and their votes are public. The Ayers event is open to the entire campus, and it’s entirely appropriate for the Senators representing Twenty Five Percent of the student body to have a say in that event.
Asking Lev or Alex to recuse themselves in these sorts of votes is like asking Ted Kennedy to recuse himself on Universal Healthcare votes because he has cancer.
Senate Money Resolutions.
And actually, I would argue this one might be the most classic post:
http://innermostparts.org/2008/05/03/ze-livebloggin-brooks-v-shuster-rutrick/
> Senate Money Resolution – You can learn all about them and more if you go to a Senate meeting.
This is the best innermostparts post ever written. What are SMRs?
Hahaha wow reading this was awesome I laughed out loud at least a dozen times!!! I hope you guys all enjoyed the trial. I’m happy about it for several reasons:
1) There was a legitimate issue to be discussed. Regardless of how the UJ rules, I believe it was an important debate to be had.
2) Both sides were friendly and civil (except for my one outburst, of course 🙂
3) The court wasn’t unnecessarily strict, and allowed the important facts to come out
4) I think everyone enjoyed themselves to an extent, and we all got a few laughs out as well
Alex’s case:
I agree that the question is: is the SMR referring to a Union project or a Club project? It’s both. The bylaws of the constitution are very unclear, so we have to rely on precedent. And precedent is very clear that “union project” is a loose interpretation. Here are some examples.
And if you abide by this loose interpretation, then it’s clearly a union project.
But if you abide by their proposed strong interpretation, then we’re still good. We talked to Jason Gray, we talked to FBoard about it, we did this that etc to involve the union.
And you know what, the Social Justice Committee has been working on this. Let me remind you how.
We acted in good faith throughout the process. I agree that our SMR didn’t explicitly say that the Union was involved, but we assumed it was implicit because we were asking for funds.
Let me be clear that the money goes towards the event, not any club. There was a lot of transparency, senators asked their constituents about this, and their constituency did want the event to happen. The SMR passed!
The union was involved beforehand, the union will be more involved now that it invested money.
If you agree with the plaintiff, you’ll say that only projects initiated within the Student Union can get SMRs. Very few, if any, senators would agree with this, this would severely limit the uses of the senate discretionary funds, and no one wants that.
*THE END*
During Alex’s closing statement, co-counsel Nathan J. Robinson takes out his brush and nonchalantly fixes his hair. So smooth.
Eric’s closing argument:
Is this a club or student union project? [ed – It can’t be both?] The Senate Discretionary Fund is not a large fund. It’s used by Senators to fund their projects, since they can’t use the F-Board. [ed – their projects like alcohol for HopeFound?] Alex and Lev are clubleaders and Senators. Their actions have been those of club leaders, not Senators.
To recap – we saw that Bill Ayers was DFA’s largest event for this semester. They haven’t spend enough on the Bill Ayers event. I object to their funding priorities and therefore they must be punished. The DFA minutes [ed – horribly innacurate, I know that many minutes have been written under the influence, for example.] show that there was no talk of involving the union.
Take the Social Justice Committee. They didn’t change the Bill Ayers event enough so that I am satisfied.
Up until the proposal to get funds from the Senate, this was clearly a club project.
Let me further add that if Senators bring a senate money resolution to the Senate with no Senate involvement, [ ed – wait wait he’s abandoned sentence structure here. Trying to get a read on what exactly he’s saying…]
Of course once the Senate Commits funds to the project the Union is involved. [ed – ok so Eric just contradicted his whole case here…]
Past SMRs are not precedent. Why? Because maybe someone in the past objected to them on constitutional grounds. Just speculating. Also I opposed some of them too.
My last point: Financial transparency. I think this goes against financial transparency [ed – what? we know exactly how much money is spent, who voted for it, and what it’s for. To quote Inigo Montoya: “I don’t think that word means what you think it means”.] If Alex and Lev had recused themselves, then the vote would have been different. And that’s my real point. I lost my vote and now I’m upset. And that’s why I’m suing.
Eric: Throughout history, other SMRs have been passed that didn’t meet the consitutional standards. But for whatever reason, I waited until now to say something about it. I will somehow tie this into financial transparency.
Is everybody aware what a great doodler Alex is? There’s quite a few interesting ones on his legal pad.
Eric: I think this case has drifted far from the real issue…
Yes, very far. I think this case is somewhere near Bermuda by now.
I think we’re done?
Oh wait, closing arguments.
Lev: Alex! He was the one who tempted me not to recuse myself! Please have mercy on a poor deluded senator!
From now on I will write Jamie’s remarks with italics in – it’s an appreciable difference.
The numbers in the courtroom have dwindled. Perhaps the last ones left win a prize?
bye yall….have fun. got to go hear about vaginas.
he was probably wearing his black/plaid hat backwards.
do you know where your gf was on the night in question?!
it was conceived in the back of a volkswagon bug
I really like having windows on one side of the room – makes it look like we have two trials going on side by side, a pure matter-antimatter duality of utter ridiculousness.
maybe to fine-tune our lawyer/court room knowledge we should go re-read Helter Skelter (arguably one of the most interesting court cases about hippies)