I don't much like government, and pretend to love chaos. Watching news reports from Cairo forces me to admit hypocrisy. The fact is, I want chaos on my terms. The state of nature terrifies. As a general rule, I would prefer not being murdered, the victim of theft or otherwise terrorized by others. If I am an anarchist, I am a reluctant anarchist, and that makes little sense.
Millions of Egyptians have taken to the streets. They have discovered the power of no. They have simply walked away from the prevailing norms governng Egypt, and from Honsi Mubarek. Mubarek's regime is teetering,...
February 2, 2011
I have a secret. I think Leo Tolstoy might be reincarnate and practicing law in California. I’m not sure how far I want to go with this hypothesis, but there are certain similarities between the Russian Count and a solitary soul out West. I would never have been able to spot the resemblance had I not read Rosamund Bartlett’s Tolstoy: A Russian Life, not yet published in North America, but available in Great Britain.
Tolstoy has a secret I’ve never understood until now. Yes, Anna Karenina and War and Peace are great books. But I care less about the view of...
February 1, 2011
I read this morning's newspapers with more than the usual fascination. The sight of protestors on the streets of Egypt thrills me, even though I do not know what comes next. Reports of economic despair, a lack of social mobility and opportunity, and a regime out of touch with the demands of ordinary people are explanation enough for the unreast. I am not yet prepared to call this a revolution. Nothing has changed yet. Repressive measures can still crush this popular uprising. Indeed, the voice of those who want security above all are already to be heard. Vigilantes roam the streets. Violence...
January 30, 2011
One of the legislative geniuses in the Virginia State Senate thinks he has found a sure-fired way to reduce the cost of dealing with violent sex offenders. Rather than spend scarce funds holding them in psychiatric hospitals, he proposes a simple and more elegant solution: castration.
Senator Emmett Hanger is all about fiscal austerity and getting tough on crime. But this proposal is simply sick. It is the equivalent of a Tea Party suggestion to reduce government waste by requiring that every third lawmaker undergo a lobotomy. Government can’t do much mischief if the governors...
January 28, 2011
January 27, 2011
Governor Dannel P. Malloy should be bold in proposing reform in the state’s courts. It is not that the judiciary is opposed in principle to...
January 24, 2011
I am in the business of offering hope, but there are hopeless situations, cases in which there is nothing that can be done. Accepting that is hard...
January 22, 2011
The economic slowdown has finally trickled down to street lawyers. Clients now struggle to pay even modest fees. There is little by way of easy...
January 21, 2011
I saw another of the law’s dismal and predictable set pieces last week. As always, a trial court blessed the mess and called it justice. When...
January 17, 2011
I was born mid-way through the baby boom, that great torrent of folks tumbling from the womb between the end of the Second World War and the...
January 16, 2011
Let me see if I get this straight: Jared Loughner is an unhinged loner, a madman who, inspired by voices only he could hear, erupted in a destructive...