Bookworm Room

If there was ever an example of misguided compassion, this story out of Britain must rank at the top of the list:
A psychopathic Satanist, given a ‘life means life’ sentence for strangling his cellmate whilst already serving life for murder, has had that cut to 20 years on appeal in order ‘to give him light [...]

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Sadie sent me a great trio of stories today, and I want to pass them on to you:
The UN wants to make sure that the Western nation’s efforts to protect themselves against cross-dressing jihadists (you know, those guys who don burqas to hide bombs) don’t offend transgendered individuals (who may or may not be hiding [...]

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I gave the post the above title because, in England, even a woman who is a convicted sexual predator gets to keep up her relationship with the victim:
A public school music teacher was today jailed for lesbian sex with a 15-year-old pupil – but was given an astonishing green light to continue the ‘affair’ when [...]

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If you are a young lawyer, struggling to learn what a non-responsive answer really looks like, you can’t do better than this question-and-answer session between Jake Tapper and Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs.  If Gibbs were any slicker, he’d just ooze right out of the room:
TAPPER:  Robert, in terms of what Geithner and Summers had [...]

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Whether you are for or against gay marriage, Robert George issues a sound warning about the dangers that flow from letting the Supreme Court get its hands on the issue:
It would be disastrous for the justices to do so [rule against California's Prop. 8 and, by extension, make gay marriage the law of the land]. [...]

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This clip of today’s Sotomayor hearings may just have hit upon the most important constitutional question that faces us all as we confront our devolution into the Obamatopian State.
In this segment, Senator Tom Coburn (R., OK) asks Judge Sotomayor whether she agrees that Americans have a basic right to self defense. The ensuing silence is [...]

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You know that I don’t like judges.  I’ve certainly made no secret of that fact, and it’s no doubt a by-product of practicing law in a region crawling with activist judges.  Listening to Sotomayor struggle to articulate things — and to avoid her own footprint — in response to Sen. Lindsay Graham’s questioning is painful.  [...]

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The Washington Post is warning Republican senators not to be mean to poor Judge Sotomayor.  It’s a funny (inadvertently funny) article, because the Post editors acknowledge that Obama was anything but gracious when he was a Senator; then they explain why, even though he wasn’t gracious, he was right; and then they urge Republicans to [...]

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Something very weird is going on when a woman has worked 25 plus years as a lawyer (in both the private and public sector), but has only about $1,000 in savings, and less than $1,000,000 in equity.
Financial records may show that (a) she gave everything to charity; (b) she gave everything to poor relatives; (c) [...]

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Reviewing the facts and law is so passe.   The New Editor explains how it will be done in the Sotomayor era.

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Sotomayor’s statements about judges (better if they’re female and minority) and their role (to make policy) have been disturbing.  It’s worth nothing though that, as James Taranto points out that, on at least one occasion Sotomayor came out strongly in favor of free speech, even though it was very ugly speech:
Sotomayor Plays Against Type [...]

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Are you wondering what an Obama court will look like?  You don’t need to look very far.  If you haven’t yet read Christina Hoff Sommers’ wonderful 1995 book, Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, run out right now and get a copy.
Generally speaking, the book is about the difference between equity feminists (a [...]

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The applause from Sotomayor on the Left is, you’ll pardon me for saying, canned.  They know Sotomayor is not a solid judicial candidate, so they’re focusing on the usual race and sex packaging.  The excitement isn’t there.  This is rote identity politics.  A good example is Ruth Marcus’s column applauding Obama’s choice, which I reproduce, [...]

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One of the horrible things about pedophile sex offenders is that, unlike ordinary opportunistic, amoral offenders, they are driven by an overwhelming compulsion.  They’re not the smelly old man living in the broken down house.  They’re the pre-school teacher, the scout leader, the priest hosting youth groups, and the nice looking man who coincidentally moves [...]

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I’m sorry blogging has been so light today, but it’s been a go-go-go kind of day that’s left little time for anything but, well, going.  I did have a thought today, which I’ll share with you.
Most lawyers I know have little that’s complimentary to say about the average trial court judge, a feeling that often [...]

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A few months ago, the California Supreme Court overruled the will of the California voters and announced that gay marriage was a fundamental right.  The voters responded by changing the California Constitution to state that, in California, marriage is between one man and one woman.  As you know, if it were up to me, I’d [...]

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Just in time for July 4th, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Second Amendment says what it means and means what it says.
I personally am not now, nor have I ever been, a gun owner.  I keep meaning to go the local firing range and take lessons (operating on the principle that, since I’m surprisingly [...]

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Two anecdotes, and then I’ll get to my point (and the anecdotes do relate to that point):
Anecdote 1:  I get my medical care from Kaiser and feel that I get great care.  Within its four walls, Kaiser is an extremely efficiently run organization that takes surprisingly good care of vast numbers of people.  Kaiser has [...]

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The alternative title for this post would have been:  You’re in prison, not a hotel.  From Best of the Web Today:

He Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly
Henry Boateng is an inmate in a Massachusetts State prison. He went to court arguing that his rights were being violated. Yesterday, a federal judge agreed:
Boateng, who has changed his name [...]

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No, Obama has not spoken lovingly about mass murderer Che Guevara. However, another prominent Obama supporter has made the two equivalent in a very obvious way: he has displayed in his office side by side posters of Obama (that socialist, artsy-fartsy looking poster) and (who else?) Che. Check out this Webloggin post [...]

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Marriage is not, and never has been, a personal right.  In Western society, it operates at two levels.  First, it functions at a religious level.  This is a deeply personal level, because in every religion, marriage is, or is equivalent to, a sacrament.  In America, you have the Constitutional right to be married in the [...]

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I went to law school in the days when students still took notes by hand. When I started practicing law, secretaries had computers at their desks, but no lawyers did. My first law firm used a “Wang” word processing system, which was really nothing more than a typewriter on the screen. The [...]

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Cliff Thier talks about the far-reaching implications of the Court’s (and the government’s) “fundamental rights” language.
The WSJ’s editors take on the election ramifications of the decision — a bit of unexpected, and undeserved, good luck for Republicans in a terribly managed campaign season.
As was to be expected, National Review quickly put together a whole catalog [...]

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Here’s the headline: “Judge admits mistake in kicking whites out of court.” Upon reading that headline, I assumed that this was going to be the familiar story about some crackpot anti-white judge who issued a ruling, a la the Jeremiah White mode of thinking, that blacks can’t get a fair trial with whites [...]

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Edward Whelan, after pointing out that a President Obama would have the potential to appoint up to six new Supreme Court justices, looks at Obama’s rhetoric about the Constitution and the law, and uses that information to explain clearly what type of justices Obama would appoint:
[I]n setting forth the sort of judges he would appoint, [...]

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