Sorry that lately I seem to be posting mostly “Administrivia.” The blog rebuild is coming slowly because I don’t have much time these days.

Law school mid-terms are coming up in a couple or three weeks here. I’ve been clerking on a double-murder case and sitting in (and sometimes assisting with research on) some gang cases. Then, of course, there is the continuous stream of appeals, because our courts simply cannot consistently follow precedent. (And who can blame them? We have a result-oriented system. If the law — either case law or statutory law — doesn’t match the result the court wants, they can’t always be creative! Sometimes, they just have to ignore the law.)

I’ll have much more to say about that in coming days — for one thing, I want to clear one of my reports with an attorney first, so as not to cause anyone any trouble — but there are some irregular things happening in Fresno courtrooms concerning gangs.

As some of you know, Fresno is hot for gangs right now. In the mind of the local unintelligentsia (a.k.a. the police department and the District Attorney’s office), Mexican-Americans who live in the same neighborhood and hang out together automatically constitute a “criminal street gang.” This isn’t true, but with the constant barrage of propaganda from the media, it’s not surprising that most ordinary people buy into it.

Once the blog is back “in order,” I intend to start addressing some of these issues. In particular, I’ll be asking why we call prosecutors in black robes “judges.” I’ll be wondering why we continue to insist that the ends justify the means when it comes to dealing with significant and serious social issues — and I’ll pointedly consider why the ends we pursue are the wrong ends.

Meanwhile, the rebuilding goes on. And while the war against terrorists may be never-ending (according to George Bush) and the war against gangs — whether they’re criminal street gangs or not — is never-ending (according to Jerry Dyer), rest assured that there will come an end to the rebuilding process.

And then we can get back into some solid discussion here.