Spoilers after the jump…

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NBC is suspending its broadcast of the syndicated ‘Imus in the Morning’ radio program for two weeks starting Monday April 16 after host Don Imus made comments criticized as racist.

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Controversial radio host Don Imus will be suspended for two weeks starting Monday April 16, NBC reports.

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Hurrah! I’m officially ethical!

I would say “that’s one less thing to be stressed out about,” but to be honest, I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought since the day I took it. However, during the 45-second window between a) realizing that my score was available and b) finding out what it was — a window made longer by the fact that I first had to Google around to figure out what score my state requires, which I had entirely forgotten — yeah, during that 45-second window, I was mildly nervous. ;)

Anyway… one really easy bar exam down, one really hard bar exam to go.

P.S. If you’re wondering, I needed an 85, and I got an 87. I guess maybe I should have been a little nervous! But hey, a win’s a win, survive and advance, right? :)

P.P.S. I think I’ll put a line on my resume that proudly proclaims, “I’m 87 percent ethical!” Would that be a good or bad idea? Hehe.

I just bought tickets to Game 2 of the Sabres-Islanders series on Saturday. We’re going to the playoffs, baby!!!

P.S. Thank you, Uncle Sam. :)

One person died today after being shot in an office building near Detroit, Michigan, according to police. Two others were injured. The suspected shooter is believed to be in custody, police said.

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Tragic news arrived in the form of an e-mail to the Notre Dame Law School student body this morning, informing us that 3L Ryan Rudd, diagnosed last month with stage 4 adenocarcinoma, died Saturday.

I’m not sure how much detail from the e-mail is appropriate to share on this more public forum, so in the absence of further guidance from close friends or family, I think I’ll leave it at that, and just express my deep sadness and most heartfelt condolences to those he was closest to, especially his family. This was all very sudden and, needless to say, is just absolutely awful.

Details about funeral arrangements are forthcoming, but according to Dean O’Hara, “We will celebrate a memorial mass here on campus for Ryan in the near future following his funeral in Crestline, Ohio.”

Rest in peace, Ryan.

Ryan with his bowling teammates earlier this semester. He’s the tall guy in the middle.


Ryan (second row, middle) with his peers at a seminarian retreat.


Lisa, Jimmy and Ryan on Halloween 2005.

P.S. Domer Law Blog: “Rest in Peace, friend.”

UPDATE: Funeral information, and another nice photo of Ryan, are in a new post here.

Tish Durkin’s blog post, “Iraq: A Place of Ambivalence,” has to be one of the most worthwhile things that’s ever appeared on the Huffington Post. (Hat tip: Kaus.)

I won’t excerpt it, lest I prejudice anyone for or against it. I’ll just urge you to read the whole thing.

Manners in the blogosphere? We don’t need no stinkin’ manners! :) But no, actually, this makes a lot of sense:

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse. …

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself. …

“Any community that does not make it clear what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is welcome to join the conversation is at risk of finding it difficult to help guide the conversation later,” said Lisa Stone, who created the guidelines and the BlogHer network in 2006 with Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins.

A subtext of both sets of rules is that bloggers are responsible for everything that appears on their own pages, including comments left by visitors. They say that bloggers should also have the right to delete such comments if they find them profane or abusive.

That may sound obvious, but many Internet veterans believe that blogs are part of a larger public sphere, and that deleting a visitor’s comment amounts to an assault on their right to free speech.

That’s true, people do sometimes react that way, as several personal experiences here in the (comparatively tame) Irish Trojan comment section have borne out. The reaction is rather absurd, as it should be self-evidently obvious that I have the right to delete comments I deem overly abusive (especially when my close personal relations are targeted), and to ban unrepentant repeat abusers, without being deemed some sort of fascistic “censor.” This blog is, after all, my Internet “home” in a very real sense. It’s nuts to claim that I am somehow obligated to let people tramp mud all over my floor, so to speak.

But — and I think this is precisely the problem that many bloggers have — because I usually let comments stand even when they’re not very civil, which I do in the interest of promoting a generally free-wheeling discussion and avoiding a “chilling effect” (the same reason I allow anonymous comments, BTW, while strongly scorning anonymous personal attacks and “gotcha” snark), a few commenters tend to think they have an implied license to say whatever they want, a false belief which leads to cries of “censorship” when I reach my tolerance limit and crack down on trollish abuse.

Clearly, I’m not the only blogger who has faced this problem. Some sort of quasi-standardized policy statement might help foster a better understanding of the ground rules, and if so, I’m all for it. (I also think people who regard this whole effort as a form of “censorship” in itself, are completely missing the point, and are probably the same people who think they have a “right” to pollute other people’s blogs with poisonous insults and belligerent nonsense.)

Imusgate rolls on, with Al Sharpton set to interview Don Imus this morning, even as he calls for the “shock jock” to be fired over his racist remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team last week. “Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media,” Sharpton said yesterday. “We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we’ve got to stop this.”

Hmm, a confrontation between Al Sharpton and Don Imus. Pompous, self-aggrandizing ass-clowns both. I think my feelings about that particular clash of titans roughly approximates the way most Notre Dame fans felt about USC playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Is there some way they can both come away from the interview looking foolish? (Hey, Geraldo and O’Reilly pulled it off!)

Getting back to Imus’s remarks… Media Bistro points out that this is actually another case of life imitating The Onion. A day before Imus dropped his “jiggaboo” bomb, America’s Finest News Source ran a story with the headline “Trey Wingo Apologizes For Accidentally Calling Champion Lady Vols ‘Pat Summitt’s Marauding Army Of Monstrous Lesbians’”:

ESPN broadcaster Trey Wingo said “a slip of the tongue” was to blame for an incident in which he referred to the Tennessee Lady Volunteers in less than flattering terms during their 59-46 victory over Rutgers Tuesday night. “It was an honest, if disastrous, mistake—I was just fumbling for something to say so I didn’t repeat ‘Lady Vols’ one more time, and somehow the thing about the lesbian army just came out,” said Wingo, who has offered to perform any public or private act of contrition the Lady Vols required of him. “They worked so hard to get here and played so well when they did, and then I had to go and embarrass the whole lumbering herd of ungainly she-oxen in front of a national audience… Goddamn it!”

Heh.

The NHL playoff schedule is set. Buffalo’s first-round series against New York begins Thursday… but Game 1 won’t be nationally televised in the States. Bah. The rest of the series will be on Versus, starting with Game 2 on Saturday. The first two games are both at the HSBC Arena, and I’d consider making a pilgrimage to Buffalo for one of them, but, er, tickets are a wee bit expensive. (On the other hand… that tax refund money has to go somewhere, right? Hmm…)

Bfloblog says the Sabres-Islanders matchup “appears to be a mismatch. But then again, that’s what Detroit thought last year.”

LET’S GO, BUFFALO!! Complete schedule after the jump.

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