The Dynamic Duo

Sorry about the alliteration… it’s a hard habit to break. Well today I had to give a presentation in one of my classes about a pretty big research paper that I wrote this semester on Civil Asset Forfeiture (for those of you interested in learning what this is or what’s wrong with it comment and I’ll either post it on our site as a Word attachment… if this is possible… Bob? Or I’ll email it too you) and I don’t think I did very well. My presentation was limited to 10 minutes which I didn’t think was very fair since they had originally indicated that it would be 12 minutes… but either way it wouldn’t have been nearly enough time. In my paper I went into the history of Civil Asset Forfeiture and told all about its evolution in the U.S. and finally what is wrong with it. That’s an awful lot of material to cover, and the only preparation I did was reading through my paper the hour before I had to present. Needless to say my time management could have stood for some improvement. I barely got through explaining what it is and what the law is today in America when my professor held up the 2 minutes left sign so I had to really rush through what was intended to be the meat and potatoes of my paper, the criticisms of the policy. A couple of people told me afterwards that I did a good job, but I was a lot more nervous than I had thought I would be. Mainly though I just felt pissed because I feel pretty strongly about the abolition of Civil Asset Forfeiture after doing all of my research and I would have liked to have got the message out there a little more. Oh well though, at least it’s over with and as a bonus (well depending on your preference I guess) it gave me something to make a little post about today. I’m going to leave you with a little joke that the Sheriff of Ada County told in a presentation he made to one of my classes today:

The CIA, FBI, and LAPD are all trying to prove that they are the best crime fighters, so the President sets up a test to find out which one really is. For the test he releases a rabbit into the forest and tells each agency to go in and catch it.

The CIA set up a network of animal informants in the forest, questioned all plant and mineral witnesses, and after 3 months of extensive research determined that there are no such things as rabbits, never have been such a thing as rabbits, and that more funds are required to assess the forests capabilities of possibly creating rabbits in the future.

The FBI went in after two weeks of no leads and burned down the entire forest killing the rabbit and everything else. They made no apologizes claiming thatthe rabbit had it coming.

The LAPD immediately went into the forest after the rabbit and came out two hours later with a badly beaten bear, who was overheard saying “Okay, Okay! I’m a rabbit….”

I thought that was great. Alright well I’m off to the movies now, I’ll catch you all later