Bookworm Room

Tweet I am not conversant with the details of the Patriot Act, nor am I a Constitutional lawyer. I simply find it interesting that, more often than not, when a Federal District Court judge rules something about the Patriot Act unlawful, that judge is a Clinton appointee. The most recent case in point is a [...]

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Tweet I just read that a federal judge has temporarily canceled the Patriot Act’s wire tapping provisions. I’m very much not a Constitutional lawyer, so I can’t comment on the validity of this decision at a legal level. Immediately upon reading that story, though, I was pretty willing to bet that Judge Victor Marrero, who [...]

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Tweet Don Quixote will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think one of the core things about being a libertarian is that you don’t try to control people’s conduct, but you do step in if they break certain clearly stated rules. Indeed, you don’t need to be a libertarian to have that view. As [...]

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Tweet My son’s Nintendo DS crashed and, as it turned out, he hadn’t saved for quite a while.  He lost several special moves and weapons that he’d gathered since the last save.  I suggested (sympathetically) that he might want to save more often.  His response:  “I’m going to sue Nintendo.”  I may be a lawyer, [...]

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Tweet DQ here.  I’ll be dropping in while Bookworm is on vacation.  Danny L. picked up on one of my earlier comments and suggested I make a topic out of my belief that we should legalize drugs.  Good idea.  I’d also legalize gambling, prostitution, and other “victimless” crimes.  I take this stand on principle — [...]

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Tweet Sean Hannity isn’t one of my favorite conservative talking heads. He has some good points, but he functions off of an anger and emotionalism that stops just short of (or maybe drifts over into) demagoguery. I thought this was very clearly displayed in his attack last night on Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney out [...]

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Tweet You’ve no doubt heard that the Six Imams, as part of their legal strategy, have named as “John Doe” defendants in their lawsuit some of the people who alerted the authorities about the fact that the Imam’s were behaving in a peculiar and threatening way. That threat, to drag citizens into litigation, might have been [...]

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Tweet One of the things that T.S. raised in my original Scooter post was that Fitzgerald said that it was wrong to disclose Plame’s identity. Now, as a lawyer, I can tell you that the fact that Fitzgerald said something doesn’t make it so. In fact, nothing a lawyer says is evidence, unless a lawyer’s [...]

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Tweet Do you enjoy debating law and public policy? If so, I’ve got both an opportunity and a challenge for you: As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am enrolled in a National Security Law class this semester. This class is outstanding; I’m so glad I elected to take it. Currently, we are [...]

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Tweet One of the catch phrases you learn in law school is that “for every wrong there is a remedy.” This means that anyone with a legitimate grievance can show up in court and get some redress, even if it’s only the symbolic peppercorn. The problem is that, something that redresses the wronged person’s finances, [...]

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Tweet There’s an article in today’s New York Times exposing (again) one of the problems with affirmative action — it elevates nice, ordinary people to situations where they’re bound to fail. This time the focus is on the nation’s top law firms, where African-Americans consistently fail to last: Thanks to vigorous recruiting and pressure from [...]

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Tweet I know that many of you are like me in that you’re disgusted with the Republican’s profligacy, as well as with other careless, pandering form’s of government in which Republicans engage. Be assured, though, that “punishing” them at election time, both in 2006 and 2008, will be worse. Why? Because the Dems will control [...]

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Tweet I got some really good comments on my earlier post about the Cleveland lawyers who went after the parents who successfully represented their son in a claim against the school district. I focused on the fact that, usually, the child's interest is indistinguishable from the parents' interest, making it appropriate in most cases for [...]

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Tweet Most people who navigate through our legal system, and who must educate themselves about our laws, opt to use a lawyer in the hope that the lawyer, through his skill and knowledge, will give them both a friend in Court and an advantage over their adversary. In other words, in our judicial system, lawyers [...]

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