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Legal Commentary

Houston's Clear Thinkers

Wide-ranging observations on law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to members of the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
By Tom Kirkendall

Post Frequency: 4.2/day

Last Entry: July 20, 2010 at 03:01:00

The WSJ's Steve Moore channels Milton Friedman

Posted on June 06, 2009

Eye of the Tiger

Posted on June 05, 2009
Ever since participating in a really good junior high school band, I've always been amazed at the way in which excellent music instructors can elicit outstanding musical performances from children. Another example here:...

A timely reminder

Posted on June 04, 2009
As the heat of the summer months rises and thunderstorms become more frequent, this Bill Pennington/NY Times article passes along a helpful reminder to golfers regarding two commonly often overlooked hazards -- overexposure of skin to the sun and...

Nice job, Doc

Posted on June 03, 2009
Check out this Lisa Sanders/NY Times article if you think that a trail of specialists is the surest way to figure out a knotty medical problem: How come not one of the dozens of doctors ? including an endocrinologist...

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Chalk up another trial penalty deal

Posted on June 02, 2009
With no valid case against former Enron Broadband CFO Kevin Howard, what was the Department of Justice to do? Rattle the saber of the trial penalty and cut a deal. On one hand, the deal appears to be an...

The golf shot of the year

Posted on June 01, 2009
National championships don't happen all that often at Texas A&M. Consequently, this video is an instant Aggie classic in that it shows the remarkable wedge shot that The Woodands' Bronson Burgoon stiffed on the 18th hole of the final...

A Brit visits Texas

Posted on May 31, 2009
A friend of mine from London, on his first visit to Houston, candidly admitted that he was surprised that there were so many trees and no sagebrush or sandstorms. One can only imagine the similar misperceptions that this BBC video...

Tea Party

Posted on May 30, 2009
As noted in this earlier post, some of the most creative work on television these days is being done in commercials....

Remembering a special mother

Posted on May 29, 2009
My mother, Margaret Allen Kirkendall, died yesterday evening at Finley Hospital in Dubuque, Iowa after a lengthy illness. She was 86 years old. The following is an obituary for Margaret that my brother Matt wrote with contributions from many...

"The Hospital"

Posted on May 28, 2009
From one of the best new websites of the past year, Old Jews Telling Jokes....

The power of info visualization

Posted on May 27, 2009
Check out this elegant example of information visualization focusing on the changes in life expectancy and wealth over the past 200 years....

There is no crying in baseball

Posted on May 26, 2009
With the passing of Memorial Day, it's officially baseball season, even though the dang NBA Playoffs seem endless. Thus, it's time for Tom Hanks as exasperated Manager Jimmy Dugan to remind us of the best baseball tirade in cinematic history....

"Rock & Roll specialist" Buddy Holly

Posted on May 25, 2009

What's better? The goal or the call?

Posted on May 24, 2009

Stros 2009 Season Review, Part One

Posted on May 23, 2009
While waiting in line to pick up a bottle of water at a Stros game earlier in the week, an old friend of mine and fellow longtime Stros season-ticket holder stopped by to say hello and chat. Eventually, the...

Brothers at War

Posted on May 22, 2009
The trailer for the new documentary -- particularly appropriate for the Memorial Day weekend -- is below....

Advantage Cartwright

Posted on May 21, 2009
Texas Monthly's Gary Cartwright caught my eye recently with this op-ed in which he bemoans the decline of sports writing in Texas. I mean really. Can anyone who regularly reads the sports pages of Texas newspapers make a good...

An amazing sporting feat

Posted on May 20, 2009
Although it is flying under the radar screen outside of golfing circles, Lance Ten Broeck's performance at last weekend's Valero Texas Open in San Antonio is one of the most amazing sports stories of the year. In fact, it...

SCOTUS takes up the honest services issue

Posted on May 19, 2009
Well now, that certainly did not take long, now did it? Just a week after former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling appealed his criminal conviction and monstrous 24-year prison sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court on an allegedly erroneous application...

Bad regulation vs. deregulation

Posted on May 18, 2009
Clear Thinkers favorite Niall Ferguson provides this timely reminder to those who believe that the financial turmoil of the past couple of years is the result of lax regulation of financial markets: Human beings are as good at devising...

Kevin Spacey is very good at impersonations

Posted on May 17, 2009
Inside the Actors Studio - Kevin Spacey...

Still the best rendition of Pancho & Lefty

Posted on May 16, 2009
Emmylou Harris' version in 1977 of Townes Van Zandt's classic song....

More Collision

Posted on May 15, 2009
This earlier post provided the trailer for Collision, the new Darren Doake-directed documentary about the series of debates and conversations last year between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson over the existence of God. Here is a longer sneak peak of...

Thinking about the Chrysler deal

Posted on May 14, 2009
Unworkable credit situation, UAW ownership and Italian engineering. What could possibly go wrong? The blogosphere has really stepped up in analyzing the government-pushed and government-subsidized asset sale by Chrysler out of its only recently-filed chapter 11 case...

The state of the Skilling case

Posted on May 13, 2009
The attorneys for former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, which is quite interesting and is being widely reported in the mainstream media. However, as interesting as...

How did it come to this?

Posted on May 12, 2009
That's the question I kept asking myself as I watched former U.S. District Judge Sam Kent be sentenced to 33 months in federal prison yesterday (previous posts here). I had an early-morning hearing in federal court yesterday and another...

Is the case against Sir Allen getting more complicated?

Posted on May 11, 2009
On first blush, the criminal case against Sir Allen Stanford, the mercurial chairman of Stanford Financial Group, would appear to be pretty straightforward. On the other hand, why was the Securities and Exchange Commission apparently falling over itself for...