Blog Posts

Connecticut takes pride in creation of the nation’s first public defender system. Representation of the indigent accused of crimes is important work. Why, then, does the state seem content to let this proud legacy collapse amid the ugliest sort of squabbling?
In recent...

The so-called Proud Boys trial has finally started. A jury of twelve and three alternatives heard a half day of evidence last week. This week, the Government will present as many as a dozen more witnesses. In the weeks to come, a jury will hear evidence about the extent to which, if at all, the...

Some books are so good, you can read them twice, each time with profit. I don't often reread non-fiction, but in the case of Dean Strang's wonderful book about the trial of a group of Milwaukee anarchists in 1917, I did so. Wow, I say. If you care about the law, read this book.
A bomb erupted...

This just may be what comes of the triumphant cry of the warrior who knows but one truth, and who is determined to destroy all those who stand in its way: Salman Rushdie, laying in a pool of blood on a stage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. He was getting ready to speak to a group...

What we need is another Kerner Commission, and what we’re being offered is a Watergate Committee. The result will be a committee that convicts the canary for dying in the mineshaft. Come the fall of 2022, and, more importantly, the fall of 2024, the toxins in the mineshaft will be that...

Setting Twitter aright should be a simple matter. Here’s what Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, should do.
Clean house. Start at the top, with Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde. She and her legion of censors should be shown the door. They tried to transform idiosyncratic...

Who owns the English language?
I ask because I am under fire for using the “n” word without permission.
I’m branching out professionally, making the seamless and easy transition from criminal defense lawyer to stand-up comic. The...

Public service is thankless, and nowhere so much so as in Hartford, where good men and women go to battle ceaselessly over crumbs. Rarely do people ascend the political heights that Hartford has to offer to enhance their reputations – what has that anthill to offer? But good men’s...

Many years ago, a colleague of mine started a gruesome game, he called it death bingo. At the beginning of each year, he’d invite folks to submit names into a pool. At year’s end, the person who forecast the most deaths won.
I never played the game. It struck...

I’ve been strung out and ornery for the past eighteen months. It started with pandemic and a shutdown of the economy, and the shuttering of the courts. All at once, a thriving law practice and all the controversy a contrarian could want came to a grinding standstill.
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