Blog Posts

I usually try to go into hiding on Father's Day. The Hallmark holidays strike as little more than marketing gimmicks. But the real reason I hide is that I am just not ready to be a father. I never was. And now my children are all in their mid-twenties. Come Father's Day, I am all regret and fear. I...

I am lightning quick to toss a dart when something offends. Often, I am too slow with a word of praise for something well done. Indeed, sometimes my fingers freeze in midair when suspended over the keyboard as I contemplate noting something worth praising. Generosity of spirit it something I must...

I miss Rick Steiger. I am pretty sure he doesn't miss me. Odds are, he never really wanted to be my friend. He was stuck with me as a result of decisions his father made. So he made the best of my presence, and we spent many long afternoons and evenings playing a game I still adore, Strat-o-matic...

If I understand progressive thinking on the question of legal fees, it goes something like this: Flat fees are wrong. They are wrong because they mask the relationship between the a lawyer's work and the client's expense. Thus we cannot charge non-refundable retainers, and must be prepared to...

"Oops, I guess we forgot to charge the defendant with murdering her brother. We bad. We're on it now, though. Justice will be done."
That's the sum and substance of Norfolk, Massachusetts' District Attorney William R. Keating's explanation of his office's decision to charge Dr. Amy Bishop with...

I don't know about the rest of you, but my sense of things is that the credit crunch is starting to have a real and tangible impact on the ability of ordinary American to pay for legal services. My sense is that the next year will be more difficult than ever. My fear is that the bar is not...

Yesterday's New York Times carried another in a series of stories that made my heart sink. This time the paper reported on Elena Kagan's views on policy matters under debate in the Clinton White House, where she worked as a deputy to the president's domestic policy advisor. The Times reported that...

I woke up in prison this morning and surveyed my surroundings. I wondered, really, whether I could get used to the place. But I wasn't in the general population. I was in a small cinderblock room with one wall made mostly of plexiglass. It was quiet and clean. For the ten minutes or so that I...

One of the most shocking parts of my college education involved stumbling upon a book about concentration camps on American soil for Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Somehow, we had missed that topic in my high school history course. I could not believe what I was reading. Didn't...

Little people get screwed more often than not. Big business wins. The wealthy win. And now, the Supreme Court has applied a liberal dose of Vaseline to the wrong end of a gavel. Bend over, America. Big Brother now wins, too, even when he loses.
How else to construe the unanimous ruling of the...