Here's my quick explanation of findings of law v. findings of fact that I use with students:

I am crossing the street and Britney Spears comes racing around the corner and hits me.

I claim she was driving at an excessive rate of speed, I was in the crosswalk and she jumped out of the car and says, "oops, I did it again."

Brit says she was driving the speed limit, and that I was drunk and threw myself in front of the car.

Whether or not she was speeding, and if I was drunk = issues of fact, and generally can not be appealed once the jury (or judge) decides them.

If I wanted to introduce a witness who heard Brit bragging that she'd run me down, Brit's attorney would object claiming that was hearsay and it can't be admitted as evidence. The ruling that the statement is hearsay (or not) is an issue of law, and it can be appealed.

Of course, I am also enraged at myself for getting so enraged at UPS.

I think it's reasonable to have moments of towering rage when dealing with UPS. Their asinine policies make things extraordinarily difficult when they should be simple.

Slate on how well reasoned the ruling was, including some further notes on Findings of Fact:

Then come the elaborate "findings of fact"—and recall that appellate courts must defer far more to a judge's findings of fact than conclusions of law. Here is where Judge Walker knits together the trial evidence, to the data, to the nerves at the very base of Justice Kennedy's brain. Among his most notable determinations of fact, Walker finds: states have long discriminated in matters of who can marry; marital status affects immigration, citizenship, tax policy, property and inheritance rules, and benefits programs; that individuals do not choose their own sexual orientation; California law encourages gay couples to become parents; domestic partnership is a second-class legal status; permitting same-sex couples to marry does not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, or otherwise screw around. He found that it benefits the children of gay parents to have them be married and that the gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment. He found that Prop 8 puts the force of law behind a social stigma and that the entirety of the Prop 8 campaign relied on instilling fears that children exposed to the concept of same-sex marriage may become gay. (Brand-new data show that the needle only really moved in favor of the Prop 8 camp when parents of young children came out in force against gay marriage in the 11th hour of the campaign.) He found that stereotypes targeting gays and lesbians have resulted in terrible disadvantages for them and that the Prop 8 campaign traded on those stereotypes.

I'm so glad we have lawyerly explanations. Thanks! I read about 100 pages of the decision before my head was ready to explode. I want to read the rest tonight.

In shallow fashion news - Today's shirt has my back tattoo more exposed than usual and I'm in the office. I have gotten one compliment and a couple of interesting looks. Shoot, since I'm wearing a skirt, all 3 of my tats are visible. Chill people.

I'm not sure what the term 'socialist' means anymore. In current political context it seems meaningless. I feel I'm pretty far left, but I don't think of myself as socialist.

From everything I've read (which is not much) I'm loving that decision about Prop 8. I've come to feel pretty strongly that gay marriage is a straight-up civil rights issue and that there isn't any constitutionally legit argument against it.

One thing that is a bit of a pet peeve in reading a couple of articles is the stock "this isn't want the founding fathers would have wanted". I don't give a flying-frack what the founding fathers wanted, they didn't live in a country that is anything like what exists today and there have been some massive improvements (not talking technology here, more like abolishing slavery, woman's suffrage, and worker protections) since their times. The constitution is what matters, not trying to guess what some long dead dudes would think of modern day issues.

At this level law is politics. I will be really surprised if this is not overturned either on immediate appeal or by the Supreme Court. I hope I'm wrong. I'm not basing this on the law but on judicial bias.

The constitution is what matters, not trying to guess what some long dead dudes would think of modern day issues.

And I am pretty sure the long-dead dudes built the constitution so that it did not matter what they thought...

What Sophia said - plus I don't think that the Constitution actually mentions opposite sex marriage either.

Gud is super awesome, pass it on. (out of respect for Mrs. Gud I refrained from posting my real thoughts of WANT TO MARRY GUD - oops, I guess I just posted them anyway).

You know what else is interesting- All the online dictionaries have "between a man and a woman" in their dictionary definition of the word marriage (now some of them have a secondary definition of 'between two people of the same sex, like a traditional marriage'). My older dictionary does not mention it-- it just says "the act of marrying" and "an intimate union".