Legal Commentary

Movin'

Posted on November 21, 2009
Hey everyone, my blog is moving! It's the same blog, except now it's in a great new place with a lot more space, and fewer cobwebs under the stairs. Head over to http://www.cuivienen.org/gondolin and check it out. Be sure to update your bookmarks and your feeds...

Trying to be a better person

Posted on November 18, 2009
Ok, so I thought I was going to have the new wordpress blog up today or tomorrow, but... I was wrong. The details are boring -- they involve my dissatisfaction with the one-click wordpress installation my hosting service offers. It really shouldn't bother me...

Transitions

Posted on November 16, 2009
Instead of posting, I spent all my blogging time today on getting the new wordpress blog up and running. It's fairly simple and should be ready in a day or two. The rest of my time was devoted, unsurprisingly, to exercising my dog and studying for the emergency medicine boards...

To get started...

Posted on November 14, 2009
To start us off easy, I'll direct your attention to some provocative blog posts. Via Deliberate Agrarian, this gem:Currently, myself and many of my friends are on varying forms of state aid [...] With this in mind, I've compiled a simple list of rules (or perhaps, "guidelines") to help minimize the embarrassment and discomfort of taking public assistance...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Missed me?

Posted on November 14, 2009
Start the celebration, because I'm blogging again. And oh, I have such big plans! This blog is going to be the best blog there ever was. Fame and fortune will be mine. I will demonstrate the awesome power of the internet to transform my solitary musings into brain candy for people from all walks of life who have the good fortune to read my posts...

Done with residency!

Posted on July 02, 2009
Hey everyone, I'm done! It was a fun, exhausting, entirely worthwhile three years. But I'm glad it's over. When I tell you that I would gladly do it again, I don't mean "do it twice." So I think I'll move myself and my cat and my dog out to Seattle, set myself up with a new internet provider, and start blogging again...

On the other hand...

Posted on December 13, 2008
Former Senator Fritz Hollings has a very interesting argument that bailing out the auto companies might be defended as part of a return to a sane policy of industrial protectionism. Protectionism? Yeah, it's an interesting piece: Of course, the economists for the global financial institutions and the big multinational corporations know this, but because their loyalties are more to their institutions and less to our nation, they continue their calls for ever more "free trade" and for continuing U...

Winter blahs

Posted on December 13, 2008
The winter blahs are a particularly bad problem when you're living in Chicago. Victims report wanting only to sleep, eat, and kill time on the internet. I've heard it called "hibernating," which is a good way to describe it. There are only two ways to cure my own winter blahs...

Short term

Posted on December 13, 2008
Re the auto bailout: I wonder if the Big Three's pitiful performance can be blamed in any way on the American system of corporate governance? Were the incentives to maximize short-term profits to blame for Detroit's ills? I'm thinking of how GM and Chrysler (and Ford to a lesser extent) were so eager to give up on the small car market in favor of big SUVs...

Friday Catbloggin'

Posted on December 12, 2008
So it's Friday; I'm back in Chicago. It's cold outside. I think I'll spend the evening inside, bloggin' with my cat Silver. That cat sure does love to snuggle on cold winter nights!

The guilty pleasures of watching GM go bankrupt

Posted on December 12, 2008
I don't think we should bail out the failing failed American carmakers. I admit that I'll feel a guilty pleasure watching them go down the tubes. It isn't that I don't support a vibrant American auto industry, or that I don't want to cushion the blow of all the layoffs that a collapse of the carmakers would entail...

Hideous

Posted on November 28, 2008
Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him...

Use me!

Posted on November 24, 2008
It's still too early to know whether President-Elect Obama (!!!) will be a split-the-difference politician in the Clinton mold, or if his rhetoric about "changing Washington" means he'll fight for transformative policies once he's inaugurated. But if it's the latter, I have a small request...

Concentrate

Posted on November 23, 2008
Reading this article about Daniel Barenboim, I come across this: I have a card in my favor, which is the ability to concentrate. The act of mental preparation didn?t ever exist for me. As a child I used to play soccer, shower, then play a concert. Now that I think about it, concentration is one of the qualities that all the most impressive people I've met in my life seem to share...

Chicago

Posted on November 20, 2008
?We?re not Little Rock and we?re not Texas,? said Rick Bayless, a friend of the Obama family, who owns Frontera Grill and is among the city?s celebrity chefs. ?It?s easy to put on your cowboy boots and eat all that barbecue. You can?t do that from Chicago...

Don't bail out or prop up, rebuild

Posted on November 20, 2008
Timothy Egan: "Why not go green, go for universal health care, go for economic stimulus ? all with one big vision? Imagine if the $700 billion were there for a fresh overhaul of the American economy, rather than being siphoned off by the very people who created the problem?" What if, instead of shoveling more money at current enterprises and industries that have been pursuing unsustainable polices for so long, we take this opportunity to get rid of them and rebuild on a sustainable foundation instead? When auto companies pay more for retiree benefits and health insurance than for steel, and when municipalities grant lifetime benefits to five-year employees, the question is when, not if, we will suffer for our foolishness...

No civil libertarians here

Posted on November 20, 2008
The most interesting thing about this quarrel between New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly and attorney general Michael Mukasey over the surveillance of terrorism suspects is what they agree about: the public is safer with more surveillance...

George Will

Posted on November 18, 2008
It's not too often I can say this about a George Will column, but I agree. Will it be painful if GM goes belly up? You betcha, but happens. Life is a bitch. A bailout will just delay the inevitable. Let's just get it over with.

Better sell your tri-level in the suburbs now

Posted on November 16, 2008
Via Slow Home, an interesting piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:We are witnessing the beginning of the end of sprawl. Like much of the rest of the country, the overproduction of automobile-driven suburban development at the fringe of the Atlanta metropolitan area has reached its limits...

Cats -- gotta love 'em!

Posted on November 14, 2008

In american politics, it's urban vs. rural

Posted on November 11, 2008
It's amazing what you can learn with a good map. The standard map of red and blue states suggests that the U.S. is politically divided between the coasts and the interior, or between the north and the south. These geographic divisions don't, however, explain my own experience...

F*** Rahm Emanuel!

Posted on November 09, 2008
According to Naftali Bendavid, Rahm Emanuel has a colorful way with one particular word. Signing off a phone conversation with a candidate, Emanuel says: ?Don?t **** it up or I?ll **** you. I?ll kill you. All right, I love you. Bye.? ?In my house, when you say **** you, it?s a sign of endearment...

McCain suffering in Colorado Springs?

Posted on October 09, 2008
I was pleased to see two references to my hometown of Colorado Springs today. Colorado Springs is known for being the home base of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, and it is the most conservative place in Colorado. It's also a place where Barack Obama's campaign is kicking the crap out of John McCain's:Because even in a place like Colorado Springs, McCain?s ground campaign is getting blown away by the Obama efforts...

Out of gas?

Posted on October 08, 2008
After we re-elected George W. Bush in 2004, I haven't been able to get very optimistic about politics. But the accumulating evidence that the Republicans are out of gas has become so persuasive that I'm allowing myself to hope. I actually think Barack Obama will win the election...

Death of Reaganism

Posted on October 06, 2008
We can't tell yet just how painful this economic crisis will eventually get, but it's fair to say that there'll be some of us who suffer pretty badly. There's going to be plenty of bad news, so I'd like to start concentrating on the silver linings in this economic cloud...

Wendell Berry a socialist? Yes, it's libertarianism vs agrarianism again

Posted on October 06, 2008
An argument has broken out in an obscure part of the blogosphere between libertarians, paleoconservatives, and agrarians. You may think you don't care, but I'd like to suggest that arguments like these tend to be more substantive than the typical democrat vs republican swill we're treated to on blogs like Kos and Instapundit...

Cubs lose

Posted on October 05, 2008
The Cubs, true to form, got swept out of the playoffs again. To the LA Dodgers: you're welcome. I suppose I'm lucky this year. Living in Chicago, it was impossible not to notice the buzz around the Cubs, and many times I was tempted to get on the bandwagon and pour my heart into the team like I did back in 1984...

Interesting lawsuit

Posted on October 03, 2008
Read all about this 7-1/2 year pregnancy.

Friday cat (and doggie) blogging

Posted on October 03, 2008
Here's Big Frank taking a little nap, high above it all. And here's Little Pele hanging out on the deck in Colorado.

The right wing blogosphere

Posted on October 03, 2008
Crises like this are the best time to visit the far-right blogosphere.  It's fascinating to see what effect reality has on the opinions of true ideologues. Apparently, no effect at all.  That's why they're called "ideologues." Take the Biden-Palin debate, for instance...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.