On Voting

People are always asking me: "Bart, how should I decide who to vote for in the upcoming presidential election?" In the future I will refer these people to this blog post.

My advice is simple, but surprisingly controversial: "You should vote for the candidate that you actually want to become president." This is controversial, it turns out, because it seems to give people license to vote for a candidate other than a Republican or a Democrat.

A race to the bottom

Tommy Craggs lets folks know what the dispute between the NFL and its referees was really about. 

Bipartisanship at its finest?

President Obama and Mitt Romney agree on something.  Is this a sign that the age of reflexive oppositional politics is over?  Or perhaps this agreement is evidence that Governor Romney is not a true conservative.  Tune into your local talk radio station to find out.  Or better yet, don't.

A storied rivalry? Maybe not.

Sports Illustrated.com reports Notre Dame is opting out of its annual football game against Michigan.  The story is presented as the end of a rivalry that "dates to 1887."

Time Flies

Hard to believe it's been a year since this all-time-great post from Mr. Gillette.

"[J]udges are ill suited to resolve social problems."

Dahlia Lithwick has a column at The Nation entitled, "One Nation by and for the Corporations." The unsurprising thesis is that the courts, most notably the Supreme Court, are bought and paid for by business interests. According to Lithwick, this campaign is insidious and damaging:

There is ample language in the Court’s recent rulings to demonstrate that judges are ill suited to resolve social problems, that such efforts should be constrained and monitored and fundamentally mistrusted. But it’s one thing to trim the sails of the judicial branch; it’s quite another to transfer power that once rested with the judiciary directly back to groups that hold power already. Whether it’s through forced arbitration, limited class certification, shifting burdens of proof or other subtle tricks, the Court has gone beyond locking out litigants and well into the realm of aiding and abetting powerful corporate interests.

It is ironic to see that the liberal position has become that judges are ill-suited to solve social problems. But perhaps judges are ill-suited to resolve social problems only when their resolution is favored by conservatives. Or perhaps, as some say, liberals should not hate the players, but rather hate the game (even though they made up the rules).

New York lawyers can slander each other during depositions.

In New York a lawyer can slander opposing counsel with impunity or at least with immunity. This guy got slapped when he called opposing counsel, ""uncivilized, ignorant and incompetent," during a deposition. Then he got sued.

Required pro bono work; coming soon to an area near you?

Reuters has a story about how, beginning in 2015, the state of New York will require 50 hours of pro bono work from lawyers who wish to take the New York bar exam.  The Wall Street Journal Law Blog predicts that this requirement will spread to other states.  What do you think Mr. Torvik, is this a good idea?

How do you not notice your pinkie finger has been severed?

Or perhaps the question should be, how drunk do you have to be to not notice your pinkie finger has been severed.

Posner v. Scalia & Garner: Scalia Speaks

Justice Scalia says that Judge Posner told a lie about Justice Scalia.  Now you know.  This story has more sequels than Die Hard.