Blog Posts

My wife and I exchange books on Christmas. I've finished the first, Lulu Miller's, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life.
It's rare I wish a book were longer. But I wish that of this book. It is actually three books in one -- at twice the...

Am I guilty of professional misconduct worthy of forfeiture of my law license if I publicly question whether we really need Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Day? Or if I post a photograph of a Budweiser beer bottle surrounded by Coors beer cans wearing hoods above the caption “Ku...

Intellectual historians sometimes refer to the “climate of opinion” as a means of marking one historical era from another. On a more granular level, folks speak of the so-called “Overton window” as the range of acceptable opinion at a given moment in time. (This...

(Originally published earlier this summer at about the time of George Floyd's death. More timely now.)
We finally learned what all the fuss has been about for the past month. It’s not about police reform. It’s not about systemic racism. It’s about race-based transfer...

I’ve been troubled and deeply pessimistic about the future of the republic throughout the 2020 campaign season. Last night, I sat up, feeling optimistic, and suddenly hopeful.
This was a fantastic year for the GOP.
If you paid much attention to...

It’s been a wild, rollercoaster of a day for election watchers, I presume. I got off easy. I had a difficult labor arbitration hearing via Zoom. Hence, a good night’s sleep and an excuse to ignore the news.
Here’s what I gather from a quick scan of the...

If Ronald Brownstein, senior political analyst at The Atlantic, is right, the results of the 2020 election hardly matter at all, at least in the long run. He concluded his most recent piece, published just before the election, with the following:
“The 2020...

I was a horrible law student, so horrible, in fact, that I am surprised my school, the University of Connecticut, graduated me, with honors, no less. I wish I could attend law school all over again.
What made me so horrible?
I blame my high school...

I am a practicing lawyer focused on criminal defense and first amendment law. When I awoke this morning, I did so without any apprehension whatsoever that there had been a coup in the United States Supreme Court. Yes, the timing of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and...

There is magic in bookstores of all types, but the magic is especially profound in a used bookstore. A discerning reader will find not only invitations to new worlds and intoxicating ideas, but the books themselves have a history. I’ve often marveled at the marginalia left by...