Blog Posts

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 will the courts begin to hold police officers to the same standards to which other witnesses are held? A client was arrested and charged with...

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 mid-1960s. I was too young to be drafted to serve in Vietnam, but old enough to be terrified by the prospect. Riots erupted in my hometown of Detroit, and...

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 rampage, killing a child, a federal judge and attempting to kill a Congresswoman. Hence, we need to be more civil in our political discourse....

I hate the Texas Bar Association. You should too. So should everyone who cares about whether people accused of a crime can find a lawyer to represent them.
I hate the Texas Bar Association because it is setting its sights on criminal defense lawyers: The unstated goal? Driving them into...

The end came swiftly: Yesterday, Waterbury State's Attorney John Connelly resigned, ending a 30-year career as one of Connecticut's most colorful and successful prosecutors. The Waterbury Republican, the hometown paper and long a supporter of Connelly's, reported his resignation as health-related....

It seems paradoxical to suggest that we need to fight for the right to die. We owe nature a death. Most of us spend the better part of our lives trying to avoid the inevitable; we want to extend this business of living for as long as possible. We do all this without ever pausing to think we need to...

The rhetoricat bobbing and weaving responding to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a federal judge and more than a dozen others, has already been transformed into dizzying nonesense. It reminds me of just how difficult it was to face the obvious fact that nicotine is addictive and...

Congress opened its most recent session by engaging in a symbolic reading of the United Constitution. A few days later, one of its members, Gabrielle Giffords, was gunned down at a Tucson, Arizona constituent event. The irony is palpable. We the people weren’t too impressed with the...

Who is to blame for the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords? Press accounts make it clear a lone gunman pulled the trigger, wounding the Congresswoman and killing a federal judge and others at a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. But in the wake of this shocking shooting, folks press...

The next set of gun sights focused on Tuscon won't be posted by Sarah Palin's interest group. No, the next party to set its sights on Tuscon will be the United States Government. Jared Loughner shot and killed a federal judge on Saturday, United States District Judge John Roll. He also shot...