MEMORIES, HAIKU, EXORCISM

Today, in my class on the constitution during wartime, I felt that we had a good discussion and that ultimately teaching makes sense; one student articulated an unlimited conception of presidential war power, another a conception of judicial enforcement of congressional war power, and many were in between and on other places in the war powers matrix. The discussion was heated, but respectful. The cases (Mitchell v. Laird, Holtzman, and Dellums) were interesting, subtle, and significant. A good way to end the week.

While I'm feeling good here: apparently my effort to rid myself of some civil liberties demons last weekend by imprisoning them behind numerically constructed syllabic bars bore some fruit elsewhere: recollection of those "bright college years" in Yale's Directed Study program (Josh Cherniss, link via Oxblog), and recollections of care packages and family holidays (Yale Pundit's "Haikus for Jews," no permalinks). If you're not Josh Chafetz, and these lines are not enough for you, see also the venerable presidential haiku site, which bills itself as the "worlds most trusted site for presidential haikus," and I am sure that is not false advertising. Via Diphthong.