Pinochle is Not Normally Played with Cocaine

This week I'm working on round two of mock trial tryouts.  Again, this is a terrible idea, but you know I can't resist.  It's basically acting, but without any character development.  This Saturday I have to do an eight minute closing argument and a seven minute cross-examination of a witness.  Hooray for fifteen more minutes of things I need to memorize.

Speaking of things I need to memorize, this weekend I am committed to doing almost nothing besides learning my lines for R&G.  This is sort of necessary, as it is coming up swiftly.  I really shouldn't be doing anything else.  Like writing blog posts.  Oh well.

I had my first brush with extreme investigatory disappointment yesterday.  I was researching a guy for my Innocence Project case.  He was a potential witness and he had written our inmate just a few years ago saying that he had talked to someone else who wanted to recant his statement.  I found him pretty easily using the whitepages, and then I did some more google sniffing: I found out his wife's name, his address history, his employment... and THEN I found out that he had been murdered in 2009.  So that was... neither happy nor helpful.

Classes continue to be a lot of fun.  I really love Constitutional Law.  We're going line by line through opinions from the early 1800's and for some reason that works for me.  I don't know why.

In Criminal Justice we continue to go through the 4th Amendment and its application.  The more cases I read the more I realize that the Supreme Court is mostly just applying the Vampire rule to homes.  You know- the one that says if you don't invite a vampire into your home he can't enter, but if you're outside you are fair game.  If you take that concept and replace "vampire" with "warrant-less searches" then you've pretty much got the idea.

Also, if you are engaged in an illegal activity but you also are engaging in a noncommercial social activity, you may be able to acquire the "protection" of the house you are in.  Hence the title of this post.