PT-LawMom

It appears that the negotiations on immigration are going fairly well. That is to say that they haven’t broken down yet. ABC reports that key lawmakers are trying to compromise on a final bill to be presented in May.

An intense round of closed-door talks among Cabinet officials and Senate Republicans and Democrats has reached a critical bargaining stage, congressional officials and lobbyists said. Senior lawmakers from opposite sides of the spectrum led by liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and conservative Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. hope to draft a bipartisan measure as early as this week that could come to a Senate vote in May.

It will be a disaster if the Congress again fails to present and pass legislation on this issue, especially as raids are stepped up nationwide and states are taking enforcement into their own hands in the absence of federal guidance.

The Houston Chronicle reports on the perception that these raids, not unlike the reduction of gas prices before the fall elections, are a political ploy to convince Republicans that the Administration is serious about enforcement.

The government insists the raids, which have terrified immigrant communities and made employers nervous in Houston and elsewhere, are part of a broader enforcement strategy just now hitting its stride.

But it’s no coincidence, skeptics on and off Capitol Hill contend, that the government has stepped up the enforcement tempo as the Bush administration tries to persuade a skittish Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a path to legal status.

“It’s a political attempt by the White House to seem credible on enforcement in order to get an amnesty passed,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors reduced immigration. “It’s purely a political ploy. That having been said, it’s real enforcement.”

Damn right it is. Just ask the women and children who are waking up each day crying from nightmares that this will be the day that their husband/father leaves for work and never makes it home again.

So now that I have been using this cool new MacBook for a while, I decided to purchase a refurbished iPod shuffle for $49! Chapin is away for work tonight so I’m sitting here with a box of old CDs loading them onto my laptop. It took me a while but I finally figured out that I don’t have to put the entire CD on — I can just uncheck the ones I don’t enjoy. I’m a pretty techno-savvy girl but some of the newer stuff like texting and MP3 players is really Gen Y territory and I’m a bit too far beyond that. I was watching a commercial today for one of the cell phone services and the daughter was talking in text-speak and her mother was like, “Huh?” and was fussing at her for the high cell bill due to texting charges. That would be me. I just don’t get it.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to everything from classic Bon Jovi to Alison Krauss to Enrique Iglesias. Now I’m queuing up Joe Diffie’s Greatest Hits because who doesn’t appreciate a little John Deere Green-style romance. And Enrique Iglesias? Have you seen the man in concert? He’s not really my type and I don’t find him all that attractive but in person he puts on a steamy turn-on of a concert. The man is pure sex. Meow!

Final selections for this evening’s playlist:
Tracy Chapman’s New Beginnings
Christian Castro’s Lo Mejor De Mi (Double Meow!)
Aerosmith’s Big Ones
Selena’s Entre a Mi Mundo
Destiny’s Child’s The Writing’s on the Wall (oops - think I stole this one from my brother!)
and
The Carpenter’s Love Songs

I’m in musical heaven.

I thought Alec Baldwin’s abusive voicemail was horrible and believe there is absolutely no excuse or reason for it. But Anonymous Lawyer’s spoof on it seriously cracked me up today. If you haven’t read his book, run, run, RUN and get a copy. I borrowed mine from the library and howled all the way through it!

As of today, the federal government has spent $419,602,000,000 on the war in Iraq. How on earth can the government turn a blind eye to these poor women in Mississippi whose children are dying at an increasing rate due to healthcare cutbacks and lack of access to quality prenatal care. How can they ignore the devastation that STILL plagues New Orleans?

Arnie over at Legal Sanity has a great blog post today exploring Gen Y’s take on lawyering and work/life balance. He asks the following questions:

What would law firms look like if they considered their lawyers a potential community of user-innovators and actively nurtured that potential? What positive shifts in the firm’s environment, service model, and employee commitment and morale would result?

Arnie concludes that the time is right for both law schools and law firms to start listening to the new generation of attorneys and considering a change.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d really like to think that this is true. But I honestly think that this new generation has a huge sense of self-entitlement and that old school firms won’t take them seriously, increased turnover or not. It’s obvious so far that they think throwing money at the students is the way to fix the problem. The women I have spoke with who’ve worked in big firms and tried to go part-time or have other flexible arrangements have all (ALL, I tell you!) reported back that it can’t be done. Most of them have either resigned themselves and outsourced everything possible to maximize the limited time they have with their kids (cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, nannies, etc.) or they’ve left the large firms for something else. I’m hopeful as new sites like Ms. JD emerge, but cautiously so.

Instead of seeing major changes at the large, increasingly global firms, I think what we’ll see is an increased number of students opening their own firms — either right away or after paying their dues (read: paying down those loans!) — and then using technology to their advantage to achieve work/life balance with mostly virtual firms. Perhaps then, over time, as these firms succeed, larger firms will begin to embrace these type of options to allow for more work/life balance.