Blog Posts

An educated person is one capable of drawing distinctions. The goal is something akin to wisdom, or at the very least, mastery of the art of learning. But those skills are not apparently valued at Lake Michigan College. Hysteria will do there, and unreasoning moral panic.
LMC president Robert...

I want to applaud the initiative undertaken by the Department of Justice, but I can't. The agency prosecutes people accused of crime. That's its role. There is no comparable agency devoted to the defense of those accused of a crime.
But now the department is about to launch a program to assist...

I want to applaud the initiative undertaken by the Department of Justice, but I can't. The agency prosecutes people accused of crime. That's its role. There is no comparable agency devoted to the defense of those accused of a crime.
But now the department is about to launch a program to assist...

Connecticut's nickname is the Land of Steady Habits. Perhaps its time to change the moniker. The State is poised to jump feet first into the front ranks of the lunatic fringe.
Legislation proposed by two central state Democrats would eliminate any statute of limitations for the filing of civil...

Last weekend I was groping for inspiration, so I reread Anthony Lewis's Gideon's Trumpet. Frankly, I don't think I'd ever read it cover to cover before. As good a reporter as Lewis was, the details still interest me less than the the holding in Gideon v. Wainwright: indigent persons accused of a...

Connecticut's nickname is the Land of Steady Habits. Perhaps its time to change the moniker. The State is poised to jump feet first into the front ranks of the lunatic fringe.
Legislation proposed by two central state Democrats would eliminate any statute of limitations for the filing of civil...

Want to improve court efficiency, increase public satisfaction with the courts, and save money? Eliminate individual sequestered voir dire. We are alone among the states in picking jurors in this cumbersome manner. And I bet our court backlog is as old as any state in the nation. When I tell...

I don't think much of those who blog under a psuedonym and hide their identity. If you think it, own it, I say. But folks have their reasons for anonymity. Sometimes it is cowardice or fear of the consequences; sometimes it is a juvenile love of mystery. In Connecticut, a blog called A Public...

Like the American Dream, Joe Stacks went up in smoke. The only difference is that in the case of Joe Stacks it happened quickly and he was soon forgotten; in the case or ordinary Americans, the dream disappeared slowly, leaving in its wake a landscape of unawillingvoidable sorrow.
Except on...

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project reports that 18 percent of 800 youths aged 14-17 with cellphones reported receiving "sexually suggestive" nude or semi-nude images of someone they know. I suspect the number understates the extent of sexually charged horseplay on cell...