Blog Posts

Welcome to the new Connecticut, a land of haves, and have nots. The new class struggle is evident now even among the ranks of state employees. Older workers want the unions to reject any concessions or give backs called for by the governor -- folks have worked a lifetime to earn pensions and...

Clarence Darrow is the sort of icon whose status guarantees that new biographies will be produced about him from time to time. Although dead now some 73 years, his presence lingers. He is on anyone’s short list as one of the nation’s greatest trial lawyers. Andrew Kersten’s,...

It is, I suppose, the very best of times, and the very worst of times. Two worlds live in uneasy juxtaposition, great wealth side-by-side with jarring poverty. On the front page of the newspaper, stories of famine, chaos and corruption. Turn the page, and forget your troubles: why you can purchase...

“The authorities were corrupt, even the best of them. The power they held was often by default.... They had as much power as we gave them, and when we wanted to take some back we could. Yes, they might jail us in the end, but only because we held ourselves back. Fear and respect flowed in our...

Does anyone really care whether major league baseball players use steroids? Isn’t that sort of like carping about breast implants at a strip club? Professional sports, like pole-dancing, is entertainment. We expect a little extra effort for the sake of our admission fee.
The mistrial...

News that 57 Connecticut state troopers and hundreds of Department of Corrections workers received lay-off notices this month compels the following question: Are we missing an opportunity? Rather than hand-wringing that the loss of these public safety employees will somehow make the streets less...

One need not be guilty of a crime to assert the right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This testimonial privilege permits a person to refuse to answer any question that may tend to implicate them in a crime. The Obama administration is seeking to...

If I could recommend one book to the lay reader about what is going in our courts, sadly, it would not be my own: It would be David K. Shipler’s, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberty. (If the reader had the taste for an earthier assessment of what it is...

Live long enough and the line between reality and farce becomes blurred: If we can imagine something happening, reality has a way of overtaking our fancy, and presenting as fact that which we conceived of simply as an entertaining possibility. Consider the case of State v. Casey Anthony, and the...

How did Jose Baez, the lawyer for Casey Anthony, win this most difficult of trials? The chattering class wants to know. Pundits from one end of the coast to another had her convicted and on her way to death row. They’re all hungover today, nursing a sense that something, they are not quite...