Engagement is the key to success for those looking to make a lasting impression in the electronic world. Link to others, comment on their comments, talk nice about them in what you write, do all this and, well ... what exactly? I’ve never quite understood the dynamics of it all. What’s more, I am deeply suspicious of the on-line "community" and its emerging norms of conformity. No mob scares me quite so much as a self-righteous mob. I guess I sacrifice readers by not playing by the rules. Alas.
So I was intrigued my a lawsuit filed by a young lawyer named Joseph Rakofsky....
June 5, 2011
I first saw John Edwards speak in New Haven many years ago, the first time he took his presidential ambitions out for a walk in New England. There was something not right about the man. He strutted like a peacock, pretty feathers and all. But when he opened his mouth to speak at a gathering of Connecticut trial lawyers, the only sound I heard was a whiny sort of squawking.
So I suppose I ought to be rubbing my hands and saying “I told you so.” He’s been indicted for playing footsie with federal campaign financing laws during the 2008 presidential...
June 4, 2011
Preventive detention. Read the words. Repeat them aloud. Say them louder. Write them on a pad of paper. Then scrawl them on a piece of cardboard with a magic marker. Preventive detention. Holding someone on mere suspicion of who they are or what they might do. The Supreme Court now says that it is legal to do in the United States. Legal, mind you, to sweep a person off the streets and into the dark, endless night of lonely confinement.
Abdullah al-Kidd learned this truth the hard way. He was born in Kansas and named Lavoni Kidd. He played football at the University of Idaho. He...
June 2, 2011
It actually felt like summer the other day: a long, languid sort of day with sunshine, no place to go, and fields humming with life. After a winter in which we saw one outbuilding collapse and the roof on another begin to crumble, the day felt like a gift. So when evening came, I decided to celebrate. I picked up Michael Connelly’s.The Fifth Witness.
Connelly might be my favorite writer of crime fiction. Mickey Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, trolls the streets of Los Angeles doing what small-shop lawyers all do – praying for paying clients. That he usually practices out of...
June 2, 2011
May 29, 2011
I recall a few fist fights when I was a kid that had me angry enough to kill someone. Indeed, had a gun been readily at hand, I just might have...
May 26, 2011
I was stunned into something approaching silence the other night as I listened to the audience at a community group meeting in New Haven rage about...
May 21, 2011
I don’t know what level of trickery, or simple intellectual dishonesty, permits the Senate to accuse some judges, but not others, of...
May 18, 2011
I was accused by an old friend the other day of getting soft and mellow. He blamed it on my psychoanalyst. You see, I spend four hours a week, mostly...
May 15, 2011
About 44 percent of all those we release from prison are expected to return within three years. To many, this high rate of recidivism represents a...
May 13, 2011
The conventional wisdom is to advise a client contemplating a defamation action against filing suit unless he is sure he can withstand...