Blog Posts

Twitter, for those of you who do not yet know this, is a social networking device that permits folks to send and receive brief, instantaneous messages of no more than 140 characters. You can send and receive messages from a computer, a cell phone or another electronic device, such as an Ipad. You...

I stormed out of a federal settlement conference the other day uttering intemperate words. The government has seized the life savings of a hard working couple whose son was growing marijuana in their basement. The feds also want to seize the couple's home. There is no evidence to suggest the couple...

My wife and I are not television watchers. We're not elitists. We're just busy. Although our three kids have all fled the nest, we each have busy and demanding professional lives. Such spare time as we can muster, we devote to our border collies, gardening and reading. Our television viewing is...

Ron Nussle was beaten in prison one day by guards who retaliated against him when he threatened to alert a friend of his, then Gov. John Rowland, about abuse in the prisons. So he sued in federal court to recover money damages. He did so just after the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) was...

History has an uncanny way of repeating itself, especially personal history. In high school, I tried and failed to find a group in which I was comfortable. I was a bad athlete, so the jocks scorned me. The situation in my home was, to say the least, a little chaotic, so I did not study; the nerds...

Why is the murder rate in the United States higher than that of any of the other 29 high-income member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)? We have slightly more than 5 murders per 100,000 population; the next nation in the list is Finland with less than half...

I've attended seminars at which Erwin Chemerinsky has spoken three or maybe four times. The first time, I was persuaded he was a genius. The second time I was a little uneasy. He speaks typically for an hour without notes of any sort, dissecting recent Supreme Court decisions with a chipper sense...

I took a younger partner in a while back. He is a brilliant lawyer; a raw talent that requires only time and effort to be burnished into a gem. I took him in and did my best to nourish him. But last week, we parted ways. There's a lesson in that, I suppose. I will learn it when the sorrow...

I wonder whether John Kissel’s lips move when he reads silently. Indeed, I wonder whether he reads at all. It certainly appears that his idea of reading for pleasure is reviewing public opinion polls. You see, the Enfield Republican thinks reading books can be dangerous. He...

The only surprise in yesterday's verdict in the Steven Hayes case is that the jury managed to acquit the man of one of the seventeen charges pending against him, the charge of arson. Guilt was a forgone conclusion and all but admitted as to the entirety of the state's case during opening...