Bookworm Room

Tweet Many people are asserting that, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the end is near.  I see that in op-eds, in blog posts, and in my email box.  America’s constitutional experiment is over, they say.  They might be right.  Or not. But here’s the deal:  if we give in to despair now, [...]

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Tweet In one of his more delightful articles, Jonah Goldberg tackles Justice Ginsburg’s disingenuous claim that the most “conservative” thing the Supreme Court can do is to pick its way through all 2,700 pages of the ObamaCare bill and save all the good bits.  After politely decimating Ginsburg’s word choice, Goldberg has this to say: [...]

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Tweet This guy turned out to be a Dope, rather than offering Hope: These Drudge headlines, though, do offer hope, real hope for a resurgent constitutionalism in America: Reminder to self: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Beware hubris. Don’t put the horse before the cart.

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Tweet As a dues paying California lawyer, I periodically receive an email from the California State Bar offering random tidbits and squiblets of news some assumes California lawyers might find interesting.  The January edition intrigued me because of drive-by punditry that appeared in an ethics analysis of Judge Richard Posner’s latest decision.  I wasn’t paying [...]

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Tweet h/t:  Mike Devx

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Tweet I know that much is being said amongst both Progressives and Conservatives about Kagan’s possible lesbianism.  Progressives are mad at her for being in the closet; Conservatives are worried about her orientation affecting her rulings as a Supreme Court judge.  Both are completely wrong. Regarding the Progressive’s disdain for Kagan’s decision to keep her [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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, [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet 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.  [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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