There's a little bit of buzz over this story about a purported class action suit filed by a lawyer who was rejected from the DOJ Honors Program, allegedly because of political bias. See thoughts from David Lat at ATL here, and Orin Kerr at Volokh here.

The basics are that the plaintiff, a graduate of the University of Georgia law school, interned at the DOJ and applied for the Honors Program upon graduating. Alas, he wasn't selected. His lawyer says he "had every reason to believe" he would get the job, and was instead "disgracefully deprived of the opportunity to do what he had planned to do." Oh, well, we can't have that. Heaven forbid someone doesn't get the job he expects, especially if it's a prestigious and competitive position.

I have not taken the time to dive into the comments to those posts linked above, but I doubt I'm the first to note one particular absurdity of this suit. The plaintiff states that he was unable to find a job in the U.S. and had to settle in Belgium. He must have really put all his eggs in the DOJ basket! Did he not even apply for other jobs?

I've had a little bit of experience with employment litigation, and I have an idea where this is going. The DOJ (if it has to answer this pleading) is probably going to lay out every reason this guy wasn't hired, and I doubt he'll look better once all that is public record. If this person actually tried to get other jobs out of law school (and UGA is a fine law school, very well-respected especially in the southeast), and couldn't, chances are there is something wrong enough with him or his record that was plenty of reason for DOJ not to hire him. Maybe politics really did play a role. But it's not like every legal employer in America was making its decisions based on political party preference. There's something fishy if he couldn't get any job at all anywhere in the country.

(Title of this post adapted from Bob Dylan's classic "When I Paint My Masterpiece.")

Happy Independence Day!

I got these new granola bars recently because the store was out of the ones I usually get. I actually tend to have several different kinds, but I often get these Quaker Chewy chocolate chunk ones that are low fat and only 90 calories. But they didn't have those, so I got the regular chocolate chunk, which I think are 100 calories and probably not a lot worse for you. But when I bit into one, I tasted coconut! Argh! I am not a fan of coconut.

I know it's a fairly common filler ingredient for chocolate things. Or maybe they think it accentuates the taste or something. If I recall, Chips Ahoy! cookies are another big offender. I guess the connection between the cocoa and the coconut shouldn't surprise me, and I don't think I have a naturally sophisticated palate, but I can always taste coconut in these things really distinctly. Sure enough, there it was on the label. And I had an older low fat one in my drawer at work, and it didn't have coconut. So I'm going to stick with those. Anyway, coconut -- bleh!

Actually, now that I think about it, is there a connection between cocoa and coconuts? Where's a botanist when you need one?! And why do they put coconut in chocolatey foods?

I was in my favorite used book store the other day when I heard the phone ring. I caught most of what the proprietor was saying, and after a while, I figured out that he was talking to someone who was in the process of opening a used book store and looking for advice. The store was small and quiet enough that I could hear pretty much everything on my end of the conversation.

The guy at my store was walking him through some of the basics, things like rent and shelf space and buying/trading from customers. It sounded like the person from the other store had some of the basics down but had not thought about a lot of the little details. After ten minutes or so of, alternately, pointing out a lot of the potential problems and bucking up the other fellow's confidence, the call ended this way:

"Well, give me a call if you ever need anything. I look forward to selling you a truckload of books! You gotta buy them from someone, right? Okay, good luck and welcome to the club!"

[hangs up]

"You poor bastard."