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Prepare yourselves, Athens residents and Ohio University students: Spring fest season is here.

Although it may not feel much like spring yet with snow showers and relatively cold temperatures forecast for this week, Friday and Saturday mark the first of a series of street parties in Athens student neighborhoods, as well as other organized fests and events, that take place almost until graduation weekend April 28-29.

Mill Fest this Saturday on Mill Street will be preceded the previous evening by the smaller Milliron Fest, at the Milliron Street apartment complexes. The fest schedule for this year, posted on the Fests of Athens, OH Facebook page, follows:

Friday-Saturday, March 17-18: Milliron and Mill fests, respectively

Friday, March 24: Congo Fest (presumably on Congress Street).

Saturday, March 25: High Fest on High Street.

Friday through Sunday, March 31-April 2: MILF Fest (not really a fest but rather a ribald phrasing for OU Moms Weekend).

Friday-Saturday, April 7-8: Palmer Place and Palmer fests, respectively.

Saturday, April 22: Number Fest, a college music festival outside Athens city limits.

Of all the street-fest events, Mill, High and Palmer fests are the biggies.

Typically, dozens of people are arrested during each spring festival, usually for underage drinking, public urination and/or public intoxication. This year, OUs Student Senate passed a resolution agreeing to reimburse student residents on fest streets for half the cost of obtaining a portable restroom if they choose to rent one for their apartment. Its an effort by Student Senate to reduce the number of students charged with public urination.

Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle said that nothing is changing this year with his departments philosophy for policing the fests. Since the change from quarters to semesters, police have become more aggressive about shutting down loud house parties on the fest streets, which has meant most street fests in recent years have been shut down by 4 or 5 p.m. Previously, the fests tended to run until late into the night, sometimes with violent and destructive results.

We close down the parties based on behavior. To say we are shutting them down earlier is kind of misleading, Pyle said. Actually, we are just responding to repeated offenses over a period of time. In the past several years those repeated offenses peak around 4 p.m. after several hours of drinking and warnings, so that is when we start shutting down parties for violations of nuisance-party laws. I dont see that changing; it is kind of inculcated now with the attendees and hosts.

The fests of the modern era are still wild, but dont bear much resemblance to spring fests of OUs past. For a period of time leading up until the late 1980s, OU held an officially sanctioned Springfest event annually with tons of beer trucked onto campus. Local, regional and national musical acts performed on a big outdoor stage (set up on the Mill Street intramural fields next to the Hocking River) playing for free before thousands of students and community members.

Simultaneous to Springfest, student tenants living in the nearby Stewart/Palmer/Mill Street neighborhood held porch parties before, during and after the event. Once Springfest was retired (as a result of the drinking age rising from 19 to 21) in 1988, those individual house parties evolved into the big block parties that continue today.

In the early years of Palmer and the other fests, when they did run late into the evening, conflict between partiers and police occasionally happened, with street fires, bottles and cans flung at police and fire personnel, and multiple arrests. In 2012, a house caught on fire during Palmer Fest (it was considered an arson at the time).

In terms of tips for student partiers, Pyle said that the best way to avoid getting your party shut down is to keep control of it.

Keep noise to a minimum and respect your neighbors. Keep litter cleaned up both during and after the party, Pyle shared from an APD FAQ. Keep your guests on your property; dont let them wander into the neighbors property. Dont let anyone leave with an open container. Dont allow underage persons to consume or possess alcohol at your party.

Dont allow anyone to throw items beyond your property line. Dont allow crazy or off-the-hook behavior at your party. Ask belligerent guests to leave; dont hesitate to summon police for help.

BELOW ARE some general tips from the kind-hearted folks at The Athens NEWS, who have all been there, believe it or not (this reporter is a 2014 OU grad himself, and Editor Terry Smith goes all the way back to the annual OU spring musical festivals of the early to mid 70s):

DO NOT carry an open container onto the sidewalk or street. Just dont do it. Similarly, try not to urinate in public.

Be wary of undercover liquor agents at fests and scattered throughout the town, especially outside gas stations and stores that sell alcohol, and parking lot entrances to student housing. Sometimes theyre fairly obvious old, bearded guys eyeing everyone suspiciously but other times theyre not. These officers can be very aggressive, so dont mess with them.

If a police officer approaches you on private property and you have an open container of alcohol but are underage, do not provide them with your ID unless you want to be arrested. You have a Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate yourself. You MUST provide the officer with your name and home address, however.

Know where your alcohol is coming from; Kegs are cool, but pour your drink yourself, and always try to ask whats in the jungle juice.

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Brrrr... Fest season hits A-town - Athens NEWS

LAS VEGAS NASCAR and moonshine have long had an intertwined relationship, so it should come as no great surprise that Brendan Gaughan, who is sort of a throwback driver, has found a profitable way to keep the tradition going.

And this time, its legal.

Gaughan, full-time driver of the No. 62 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing in the XFINITY Series, has started up a new side business called City Lights Shine. And the Las Vegas native isvery excited about it.

City Lights Shine is the new whiskey moonshine that were making here in Las Vegas, Gaughan said Friday in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway media center. We are the first and only legal distillery in Las Vegas. Ive got to stress the legal part.

Gaughans partner in the business venture is former NASCAR official Mike Dolan.

The back story is there is a certain individual who may have been a NASCAR official for quite a few years, who may have made a product every once in a while that we would, uh, taste, Gaughan said. We may or may not have done that. I will invoke my right to the Fifth Amendment.

Brian Lawdermilk | Getty Images

Gaughan said he eventually introduced the product to his parents, owners of South Point Casino in Las Vegas. His mother, Paula Gaughan, actually liked it so much that she encouraged her son to pursue making it and distributing it all legally, of course as a business enterprise.

My mother and my father really enjoyed the product. They actually liked it, Brendan Gaughan said. So a couple years ago, my mom said, Hey, I like this stuff. Look into it.

So I did. And Ive always been about the numbers, plus I like to do what I know. Thats kind of been a Gaughan family motto for about 50 years The numbers added up. My partner moved out from North Carolina to Las Vegas.

Now it seems to really be taking off, in part thanks to Gaughans SouthPoint and NASCAR connections.

Its now available at the SouthPoint and Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Thanks to (Speedway Motorsports Incorporated president) Marcus Smith and SMI, it now looks like were going to have it all the SMI tracks.

That includes the tracks not only Vegas, but also the ones at Atlanta, Bristol, Charlotte, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Sonoma and Texas, where Gaughan says City Lights Shine will soon be available in strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and the original all-clear flavors.

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports | Jerome Miron

FOX Fantasy Auto Form a Racing Team, Compete for Prizes

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Brendan Gaughan takes NASCAR back to its roots, and this time it's legal - FOXSports.com

Yet Another Assault On Freedom Of Contract And Property Rights Forbes Washington Supreme Court precedents have established that this language, similar to that of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, includes the right to sell or lease your property on a nondiscriminatory basis to an individual of your choosing.

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Yet Another Assault On Freedom Of Contract And Property Rights - Forbes

A lot of attention in the next few weeks will be focused on the Senate Judiciary committee as it considers Neil Gorsuchs Supreme Court nomination. But the Judiciary committee also performs other important functions, including one subcommittee that can wield great power in rare cases.

Birch Bayh and Lyndon Johnson

The United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice is one of six committees within the Judiciary committee. The Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice shall have jurisdiction over the following subject matters: constitutional amendments, constitutional rights, Federal civil rights, claims against the United States, non-immigration private claims bills, ethics in government, tort liability, including medical malpractice and product liability, legal reform generally, other appropriate matters as referred by the Chairman, and relevant oversight, the Judiciary Committee says on its official website.

The job of originating and crafting amendments in many ways is the ultimate constitutional power. There is also a parallel committee in the House, but in several past cases, the Senate committees leadership made several constitutional amendments a reality.

Senator Birch Bayh served as the subcommittees chair for nearly two decades and he drove the process that resulted in the 25th Amendment and the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. A third effort championed by Senator Bayh, the Equal Rights Amendment, was approved by the House and Senate, but it fell three states short of full ratification.

The most recent amendment, the 27th Amendment, was ratified in 1992 but it was part of the original Bill of Rights introduced by James Madison and sent to the states for approval in 1789. (There wasnt a Senate subcommittee in place to review it.) It wasnt ratified in 1791 with the original Bill of Rights, but no deadline was attached to the ratification process. In 1984, more states began to ratify the amendment, which defines how and when Congress can control its own compensation.

In Bayhs case, the subcommittee had considerable work to do on the 25th Amendment, a version of which had been under consideration before President John F. Kennedys death in 1963. Since 1841, when Vice President John Tyler boldly claimed the title of President after William Henry Harrisons death, the Tyler Precedent allowed Vice Presidents to assume the full powers of the presidency after that office became vacant despite the lack of a direct constitutional power to do so in the Constitution and its amendments.

The 25th Amendment also dealt with other potential constitutional crises: the inability of a President to perform his duties in office due to illness or other reasons, and the replacement of a Vice President no longer in office.

As a young attorney, current Fordham Law professor and former dean John Feerick worked with Bayhs subcommitee to draft the language that eventually became the 25th Amendment. He recounted the arduous process in a 1995 law journal article, The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: An Explanation And Defense.

Bayh introduced Senate Joint Resolution 139 in December 1963, just months after replacing the late Estes Kefauver as subcommittee chair. (There was reported talk that the subcommittee would be phased out until Bayh, a freshman Senator, asked for the assignment.) Kefauver also had championed an amendment dealing with presidential disability.

Feerick recounted that initial committee hearings in 1964 called leading historians and experts to testify about different scenarios about the inability of a President to perform duties and the process of filling an in-term Vice Presidential vacancy. The Senate approved the subcommittees recommendations in September 1964, but the House didnt act during the election year and out of respect to Speaker John McCormick, who was next in line to the presidency with no sitting Vice President in office.

In January 1965, Bayh reintroduced the bill in the Senate, with support from the newly elected President Lyndon Johnson. After a debate between Bayh and Everett Dirksen, the bill was modified and approved again by a unanimous Senate. In the House, Feerick said more than 30 possible versions of the amendment were before its Subcommitee on the Constitution. Bayh and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell (as president of the American Bar Association) testified in the House. The House version passed by a 386-29 vote.

The bills were sent to a conference committee that worked out drafting differences. According to author James N. Ronan, Bayh turned to Powell to intercede with the conference committee to work out disputes about the drafting language. The revised amendment was passed by a House voice vote and a 68-5 margin in the Senate and sent to the states for ratification on July 6, 1965. Nevada became the 38th state to approve the amendment on February 10, 1967, completing the process.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment is the product of extensive debate and discussion, in which full account was taken of the history of presidential succession and the many worthy suggestions offered for improvements in the succession framework. The amendment provides an approach to presidential succession which allows for an effective transfer of power in all cases of presidential inability, Feerick concluded.

Bayh also advocated for a lower voting age for Americans while he was a state legislator. The 26th Amendment came about quickly and through a much-different process. Congress decided in 1970 to lower the national voting age from 21 to 18 during the Vietnam War through an act of legislation. However, the Supreme Court in December 1970 decided on a challenge to the law, in Oregon v. Mitchell, Congress only had thepower to change the voting age in federal elections. With a presidential election on the horizon and election officials facing the costs of accounting for two sets of voting ages, Congress acted in record time getting the 26th Amendment in the hands of the state to ratify.

Bayhs subcommittee worked on drafting language after the Court decision and by February 1971 it had issued an 81-page report recommending the amendment. There is no basis in logic, in policy or in practice for denying 18-year-olds the right to vote in state and local elections when they may vote in federal elections, the subcommitee concluded. Within six weeks, the House and Senate approved the amendments language and send it to the 50 states for consideration. The 26th Amendment was ratified about three months later the quickest ratification process ever when North Carolina approved it.

Since then, two other proposed amendments have made it out of the subcommittee to be approved by the full House and Senate, only to fall short in the ratification process. Bayh proposed a Senate version of the Equal Rights Amendment and held subcommittee hearings in May 1970. (The first version of the ERA had been proposed in Congress in 1923.) In March 1972, the Senate approved the ERA after it had passed in the House. At the time, Bayh thought the ERA would be ratified within two years, but it failed to get enough support over the next decade.

And in 1978, the House and Senate approved an amendment to grant congressional voting rights to the District of Columbia after hearing were held in Bayhs subcommittee. The proposed amendment repealed the 23rd Amendment and gave the federal District two United States Senators and a representative in the House. However, only 16 states ratified the amendment before its approval period expired in 1985.

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A little-known Senate subcommittee that holds great constitutional power - Constitution Daily (blog)

Forbes

Filing Your Taxes Is Not Self-Incrimination, Rules Court Forbes So he took the Fifth. The court had an easy time with his argument, and rejected the claim. The Fifth Amendment does grant a privilege against self-incrimination. However, that doesn't mean you can just refuse to file taxes. The mere act of filing an ...

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Filing Your Taxes Is Not Self-Incrimination, Rules Court - Forbes