Every year, about this time, the stress level here at the law school starts to rise. First-year students seem particularly susceptible. I hear the word “outline” a lot in the halls. Students talk about how much they studied over the weekend instead of how much fun they had. Everyone gets a little bit more serious.
Serious is fine.
Frantic is counter-productive.
Several months ago I blogged about the situation of Liberians who fled their country for the United States (but who did not receive official status as refugees) and who have lived here for years in a “temporary” status, while it remained unsafe to return to Liberia. As I explained in those posts, these US residents face yearly the prospect of deportation to Liberia, unless Congress acts to pass legislation allowing them to stay permanently. Last year the crisis was once again temporarily resolved by President Obama’s one-year extension of protection. It’s unclear whether any permanent status for this group is on the horizon, as legislation on the issue seems to be, at this time, stalled in committee in both the Senate and theHouse, so I may be posting about this again next spring.
Anyway, if you followed those posts with any interest, or if you are generally interested in the experience of refugees, then you may want to review the recently-released report from The Advocates for Human Rights, entitled A House with Two Rooms: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia Diaspora Project. (Confession: as previously disclosed, I worked for the Advocates during and after law school, and I think it’s a terrific organization.)
“More coffee dear?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes please. Did you see this story in the newspaper? The Zombie Party has come out in favor of the President’s health reform plan.”
“Isn’t that good? I thought that you were in favor of health reform.”
“I am, but I don’t trust these Zombies. They are not rational. You can’t talk to them. Have you seen the television footage of those town hall meetings? It’s just a sea of screaming faces. The raw emotion of these Zombies is terrifying.”
“So why is the Zombie Party supporting health care reform?”
“The story says that they will support the plan if the Democrats put the ‘death panel’ provisions back in. It seems that Zombies favor ‘end of life planning,’ although for some reason their representatives in Congress keep referring to it as ‘planning for the end of life.’ I just don’t trust these Zombies.”
