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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

Public financing of a private boondoggle

Posted on July 03, 2008
The WSJ's Holman Jenkins splashes some cold water on the suggestion that General Motors' Volt automobile will have much of a positive impact either environmentally or on GM's bottom line: At best, the Volt will be an affluent family's...

Tiger's tournament enters the Tiger Chasm

Posted on July 02, 2008
The Tiger Chasm -- the widening netherworld of golf tournaments that don't attract much attention because Tiger Woods doesn't play in them -- has now swallowed even Tiger's own tournament, this weekend's AT&T National at Congressional Country Club in...

Tyson who?

Posted on July 01, 2008
I swear, you can't make this stuff up. The American Family Association apparently has a policy over at its new outlet, OneNewsNow, never to use the word "gay" in an article. Instead, the AFA always replaces "gay" with the...

Continuing to suspend reality on financing the soccer stadium

Posted on June 30, 2008
This earlier post addressed the economic absurdity of having financially-strapped Texas Southern University make an investment in the long-proposed Houston Dynamo downtown soccer stadium. However, why is it that common sense seems to evaporate into thin air whenever either...

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The Quad previews the Coogs

Posted on June 29, 2008
In its countdown of the 120 Division I-A football programs, The Quad previews the 2008 Houston Cougar football team at no. 64....

On the driving range in The Woodlands

Posted on June 29, 2008
Several years ago, during the early part of the final round of the U.S. Women's Open, I was hitting balls at the driving range of the Player Course here in The Woodlands. I figured that I would hit balls...

U.S. Energy Policy

Posted on June 28, 2008
Via Tom McMahon....

The stress of selling snake oil

Posted on June 27, 2008
In my annual preview of the Stros' season, I made the following observation about the then newly-acquired Stros pitcher, Shawn Chacon: "Chacon was an inconsistent starter for six seasons before washing out with the Yankees and Pirates in 2006...

Colbert on Hannity

Posted on June 26, 2008
Stephen Colbert channels Jessica Hagy in analyzing conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity....

The Future of Law Firm Advertising?

Posted on June 25, 2008
Clear Lake-area plaintiff's lawyers Ron and Scott Krist use the YouTube video below to explain why helicopter crash victims should hire their firm. Not exactly To Kill A Mockingbird, but pretty darn effective nonetheless. By the way, I wonder what...

Browse while finding a pickup game

Posted on June 24, 2008
Proving that there is a market in almost everything, Infinite Hoops allows you to find or schedule pickup basketball games. About 15 years and a blown out Achilles' Tendon late for me, though. Meanwhile, Zoomii is a slick virtual...

Clear thinking to begin the week

Posted on June 23, 2008
In three and a half minutes, Richard St. John explains the keys to success. The late Milton Friedman explains the folly of the prohibition policy against drugs....

Expanding DKR Memorial

Posted on June 22, 2008
A couple of years ago, while attending the Texas-Iowa State football game (blog post here), I took the photo on the left of the horseshoe section on the north end of the University of Texas' Darrell K. Royal Memorial...

Comparing boondoggles

Posted on June 21, 2008
Warren Meyer has some fun commenting on the latest Phoenix-area urban boondoggle -- a three-quarter of a billion dollar state subsidy for an amusement park in the Arizona desert! Of course, that subsidy is peanuts in comparison to the...

The obligation to throw in the towel

Posted on June 20, 2008
So, the shoe finally dropped on the two Bear Stearns executives who managed the two Bear hedge funds that imploded in mid-2007. A copy of the indictment is here. As I read the indictment, the government is contending that...

Tiger's bittersweet victory

Posted on June 19, 2008
Just off one of the most remarkable performances of his amazing career, Tiger Woods is going on the shelf for the rest of this golf season and probably for a good chunk of next season rehabilitating from surgery to...

Futures trading 101

Posted on June 18, 2008
As noted many times over the years on this blog (recently here and here), the instinct of most politicians and much of the mainstream media is to embrace simple "villain and victim" morality plays when attempting to explain investment...

Criminalizing Failure

Posted on June 17, 2008
As Larry Ribstein reports, the Enron prosecutorial veterans are already picking up the usual suspects in regard to the Bear Stearns meltdown. As John Carney observes , do any investors really feel safer as a result of these criminal...

Bill King's story

Posted on June 16, 2008
As Republican presidential nominee John McCain is doing his best to stoke public prejudice against job-creators and wealth builders, longtime Houston lawyer and businessman Bill King is promoting his new book, Saving Face (Somerset 2008), which is King's personal...

The Refco Question

Posted on June 15, 2008
Ellen Podgor has the sentencing memos in regard to former Refco CEO Phil Bennett's plea deal. They are interesting reading, but what they do not answer is the most intriguing question that remains unanswered from the entire Refco affair: Why...

The best city for a job

Posted on June 14, 2008
BusinessWeek knows....

Cool Graph Friday

Posted on June 13, 2008
H/T Craig Depken H/T W$J/Josee Valcourt H/T Russell Roberts ...

An odd spokesman for limiting corporate criminal liability

Posted on June 12, 2008
The always-alert Ellen Podgor notes that former Enron Task Force chief Andrew Weissmann (see also here and here) recently wrote an amicus brief on behalf of various business and defense-oriented organizations in the United States v. Ionia Management, S...

Gearing up for the U.S. Open

Posted on June 11, 2008
Golf course author and blogger Geoff Shackelford is blogging the U.S. Open this week at Torrey Pines in San Diego in the same manner as he blogged The Masters earlier this year, and he kicks off the U.S. Open...

Stros 2008 Season Review, Part Two

Posted on June 10, 2008
Through 40% of the season, the Stros' record is precisely what you would expect from a club that struggles to maintain National League average performance -- 32-32, including 15-16 in the second fifth of the season. That's about the...

Aging well

Posted on June 09, 2008
Steve Winwood sounded good back in the 1960's and 70's during his days with the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. I'll be darned if he doesn't sound even better now....

Colbert v. Will

Posted on June 08, 2008
Clear Thinkers favorite Stephen Colbert finally meets his match -- syndicated columnist George Will:...

Take a ride on Google Earth

Posted on June 07, 2008
Check the following out on Google Earth. Go to "Tools" in the top navigation bar, click "Options" and then the "Touring" tab. Down below, you will see "Driving Directions Tour Options. " Input the following settings: Camera Title: 80...

Hillary's flaw

Posted on June 06, 2008
The strangely obsolescent presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton is one of the most intriguing stories of this political season. The Financial Times' Clive Cook provides a spot on foreigner's perspective: [Clinton's] performance last night was stunningly ill-judged, and speaks...

Counting down with the Quad

Posted on June 05, 2008
It's less than three months until the kick-off of the 2008 college football season, so in anticipation of the upcoming season, the New York Times' quite good college sports blog -- the Quad -- is providing an excellent summary...

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