THANKS TO GLENN for the invitation to fill in, and to my other co-guestbloggers for a great week. I enjoyed it very much.

GAWKER ASKS “ORGASM OR EXCELLENT MARINARA?” Can you tell the difference between your favorite Food Network foodies and porn stars?

THE KISS ARMY invades Cleveland, demanding Kiss’s induction into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. Sources say that they were armed with Love Guns and sought to “meetcha, meetcha in the Ladies’ Room.” With their money, you know, you can’t be too soon. What’s next? An “Army of David Lee Roths”?

MORE LAW SCHOOL ADVICE. Hat tip Ron Coleman.

“THE GOOFUS AND GALLANT GUIDE TO LAW SCHOOL“: Priceless. (Warning: contains some bad language.)

LAWYERS BEHAVING BADLY, PART N+1: From my colleague Marcia McCormick comes this “Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Acceptance of Lunch Invitation.”

ADVICE TO LAW STUDENTS REDUX: Orin Kerr offers some additional good advice.

THE RETURN OF THE MORALS CLAUSE? Today’s Wall St. Journal has an interesting article about how studio execs are pining for the days of the morals clause, in which studios could sever contractual relationships with stars who got in trouble that might generate bad press for the studio. Tom Cruise’s general looney behavior, Lindsey Lohan’s antics, and, of course, Meshuggah Mel Gibson are all prominently mentioned.

ADVICE TO INCOMING FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS: It’s just about time for classes to start. The first year students at Cumberland begin orientation a week from Monday. I remember my first year experience as being profoundly challenging and humbling. Thinking back over my first-year, first semester experience and seeing first-year students from the other side (this is my eighth year teaching), I have a few pieces of advice for the up-and-coming first-year law student.

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A GREAT REFERENCE FOR FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS: Orin Kerr has posted an essay on “How to Read a Judicial Opinion.”

MORE GOOD ADVICE from LaShawn Barber on avoiding Blogosphere Scandal. Today’s installment, “Don’t Plagiarize.”

WARNING FRESHMAN ABOUT MYSPACE, FACEBOOK: Colleges are apparently reminding freshmen to be careful about what they put up on the web. This strikes me as useful advice. The Wall St. Journal had a recent front page story about employers checking MySpace and Facebook to see what potential employees had written or posted.

WHY DO SCHOLARSHIP?: The Empirical Legal Studies blog had an on-line discussion (which starts here) about Tennessee law professor (and my buddy) Ben Barton’s paper, which concludes, on the basis of data he painstakingly collected, that there is no correlation between teaching and scholarship. In other words, just because one is a prolific scholar, that doesn’t mean that person is a good teacher. Much of the discussion has centered on whether using student evaluations is a good proxy for measuring teaching effectiveness. I think that Ben makes a great case for using them. However, one of the most interesting questions raised by Ben’s paper is whether (assuming that his findings are true, or are largely true) the legal academy needs to come up with an independent justification for the production of scholarship. The ABA and the AALS require that law schools hire full-time teacher/scholars, and require that vast resources be devoted to facilitate the production of legal scholarship. (Query how much this focus on scholarship and the resources that need to be devoted to it push up the cost of legal education?) Before Ben’s study, my sense is that many scholars would have bet there was some relationship between good teaching and good scholarship. Now that he’s called that into question, should we be asking ourselves whether we need to justify scholarship on other grounds? Don’t misunderstand, I am all in favor of scholarship. I like writing and thinking about problems in the law and (I hope) advancing the discipline in my own modest way. But my interaction with alumni (among other groups) suggest that we in the academy treat the need for scholarship as self-evident when it is not necessarily apparent to others. Perhaps Ben’s paper could (among other things) begin a converstation on that topic as well.

DWS?: Joe Olson sends this article from the Times describing Preston, Lancashire’s attempt to ban “Drinking While Standing.”

ID KOd in KS: It looks like another defeat for intelligent design advocates. Yesterday’s election for the state school board returned “moderate” candidates, who might now have an edge over conservative board members who had sought to change the science curriculum in the state to include discussion of intelligent design. [If they are going to have a slight edge, are you sure that the election represents a KO? — Ed.] You again? Okay, fine, next time, I’ll let you title the post.

FREE SPEECH AND THE U.S. LIBERTARIAN TRADITION: Another book I’m reading this summer, which I highly recommend, is Ronald Krotoszynski’s The First Amendment in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Professor Krotoszynski, who teaches law at Washington and Lee, examines freedom of speech in four other liberal democracy, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the U.K., and compares our free speech regime with that of those countries. Some may be surprised at how freedom of expression is often (from the U.S. point of view) subordinated to other values, like multiculturalism, personal dignity, and the like in those countries. In fact, when it comes to protecting free speech, the priority it is given by our courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, makes the U.S. something of an outlier in the world. While I think that our courts get it right, Professor Krotoszynski’s book (and comparative studies generally) is a reminder that our libertarian tradition was not inevitable, nor is it the only possiblity for liberal democracies.

“I’M A FIEND FOR MOJITOS”: Other than that cheesy line, uttered by Colin Farrell, Miami Vice was a good movie. It was edgy and dark, Farrell and Jamie Foxx brooded convincingly. Michael Mann even found a good replacement for Lt. Castillo, played in the TV series by Edward James Olmos. Remember when it turned out that Castillo was some kind of ninja or something? What was that all about?

DOH!

NO JOB, DON’T CARE: I found this story, from yesterday’s NYT, profoundly disturbing. These guys are unemployed, not looking for work (like Clark Griswold’s cousin-in-law Eddie they all seem to be “holding out for a management position”) making their wives work to support them at crummy jobs they won’t take , and laying waste to their savings. What happens, I wonder, when the savings runs out? And who are these super tolerant women? When I was practicing law, I used to beg my wife to let me quit and go work at a bookstore. She laughed. “Why should you get to quit your job?” We compromised; we both quit . . . .

SEND IN THE STANDARD “RICH AND FAMOUS” CONTRACT: Ever since Sonny Mehta awarded Yale law professor Stephen Carter a multi-million dollar contract to produce two novels, law professors cum novelists everywhere have seem to have emerged. Kim Roosevelt, Paul Goldstein and Jed Rubenfeld have followed Professor Carter in writing very interesting novels. This summer, I read Roosevelt’s, In the Shadow of the Law and Goldstein’s Errors and Omissions. Rubenfeld’s novel, The Interpretation of Murder, will be released in September. So have the publishers received value for the product? I can say that both are excellent books. What follows are a couple of mini-reviews of both.

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HOW TO AVOID A BLOGOSPHERE SCANDAL: The title of a helpful series from LaShawn Barber. [Is she trying to tell you something?–Ed.] Don’t be snarky just because Glenn didn’t take you on his trip!

IF DOGS COULD TALK: I suspect that a lot of them would say something like this.

FRINGE CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY GOES HOLLYWOOD: The producer of movies like Trading Places has released a “documentary” that parrots the usual claims from tax protestors about how taxes are “voluntary” and that the federal government has perpetrated a massive fraud to collect incomes taxes. David Cay Johnston describes the movie and its, um, casual use of facts here. My favorite: “Not mentioned in the film is that Mr. Russo has more than $2 million of tax liens filed against him by the Internal Revenue Service, California and New York for unpaid federal and state taxes. Mr. Russo declined to discuss the liens, saying they were not relevant to his film.” Oh, okay. No reason to doubt his objectivity, then.

PERSPECTIVE, PLEASE: Mitt Romney apologized for using the term “tar baby” to describe the Big Dig debacle. Can we save the public shaming for public officials who actually intend their comments to be offensive? Like, say, Mel Gibson?

I wanted to thank Glenn for inviting me to guestblog this week. I look forward to hearing what’s on my co-guest-bloggers’ minds as well. I’ve just started grading my summer school exams today, but later today I’ll post about the emerging phenomemon of the law professor novelist.