Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Quote of the day

By Brendan Loy

Becky, complaining to her mother about a $3.99 "sale" on chicken at Kroger's:

"That's not a sale price! That's extortion! This is chicken, not gold!"

It's back!

By Brendan Loy

...with a new hard drive, motherboard and keyboard. w00t.

Chemerinsky re-hired

By Brendan Loy

He's back, baby!

UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake and Erwin Chemerinsky have reached an agreement that will return the liberal legal scholar to the dean's post at the university's new law school, the university announced this morning.

With the deal, they hope to end the controversy that erupted when Chemerinsky was dropped as the first dean of the Donald Bren School of Law.

Drake traveled over the weekend to Durham, N.C., where Chemerinsky is a professor at Duke University, and the two reached an agreement about midnight Sunday, sources told The Times.

In a statement, Drake and Chemerinsky said: "Many issues were addressed in depth, including several areas of miscommunication and misunderstanding. All issues were resolved to our mutual satisfaction."

Drake's decision to dump Chemerinsky last week set off a national debate about academic freedom and sparked a revolt by faculty at UCI against Drake.

Cool.  Now Chemerinsky needs to do something really outrageous, so he can get himself re-fired. C'mon Erwin, you know you want to be the Billy Martin of academia!

Anyway, about that whole "end the controversy" thing... well, as Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" (Suddenly I have this mental picture of Corso, sitting on the GameDay set with a crowd of cheering UC Irvine students behind him, putting on a larger-than-life replica of Chemerinsky's head after "picking" him to win the showdown with Drake... heh. Someone needs to Photoshop this!) An anonymous tipster sends along this e-mail from the chair of the UC Irvine Academic Senate, sent out at 10:59 AM PDT today:

Dear colleagues,

Recent events related to the appointment of the Dean of the Law School have raised concerns about academic freedom and the Chancellor's leadership of the campus. We are encouraged by the joint announcement of Chancellor Drake and Professor Erwin Chemerinsky that Professor Chemerinsky has been offered and has accepted the position of Dean of the UCI School of Law. However, it is important that the UCI faculty discuss the issues and concerns raised by recent events.

The Senate Cabinet has called an emergency meeting of the Divisional Senate Assembly for Thursday, September 20, 2007, 2:00-5:00 p.m. in 1100 Bren Hall (Bldg 314 on the UCI map). All faculty are invited to attend this meeting.

The agenda for the meeting is the Chancellor's leadership of the campus and our commitment to academic freedom.

Tim Bradley, Chair, UCI Academic Senate

This could be ugly, folks. You know what they say about academic feuds.

More here. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Booty Booty Booty!

By Brendan Loy

Via Boi From Troy at AOL Fanhouse, the Trojan Marching Band's new Booty Rap:

In a related story, while the USC Trojans are clearly rather good at this whole football thing, they're not so good at losing coin tosses.

Two lunchtime polls

By Brendan Loy

Vizu.com - Opinion Polls & Market Research

E.C. article update

By Brendan Loy

My pragmatic defense of the Electoral College has been linked on Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog.

Speaking of which: it seems that, if my paper does get an offer of publication from a law review or journal, I'll have at least a little bit of time to revise and edit it before making my final submission. And of course, as I mentioned before, if it doesn't get an offer, I'll be revising it extensively and then re-submitting in the spring. So, for those who wanted to be "beta-testers," your input is still most welcome. Same goes for anyone else with suggestions, criticisms, etc. You can download it from SSRN, or if that doesn't work for you, e-mail me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com and I'll be happy to send you a copy.