Still Got It

Back in the early Eighties, I spent the weekend at my cousin’s house in Ocala, Florida. Saturday, he and his wife got a baby sitter for their then infant son and we “did the town.” Nice dinner somewhere, and then, on to the Ocala Holiday Inn for music.

Yes, I know, Holiday Inn, bad lounge singer. Not always.

I won’t tell you the name of the act just yet. They were set up in one of the ballrooms. We were seated about midway back. The lights went down in the room and up on the stage. And we heard the most amazing sounds, of the then unknown, Miami Sound Machine.

One of the best lounge acts I’ve ever seen. Why bring this up now? I watched the now Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine on TV in a concert at Caesar’s Palace.

She and they have still got it.

The Newspaper Crisis Hits Atlanta, Again

Last year the AJC cut its circulation area and cut a bunch of reporters, shifting many of what were left into its online offering. It abandoned national and international news to AP, saying it was going to focus on local news.

It just announced that its news staff will be further reduced to 350 (from last year’s 500).

That local angle? Now, it is cutting all of its area sections, which now appear a couple of times a week.

It is planning a revamped Sunday paper that will appear sometime early next year. Rumored to be gone is the opinion section called @Issue.

So, what is left? Copied national news. Copied international news. Reduced local news. No editorial section. (Rick, there is no threat to get rid of the funny papers.) Sudoko apparently will survive. The AJC still puts Parade Magazine in the Sunday package, thank God (heavy sarcasm).

I suppose I am as much to blame as anyone for this. I get the Sunday paper because it is part of my life. I don’t buy during the week because I read it online or get it in print to read at lunch (there's usually one laying around at the restaurant). Even there, I’m guilty lately. The newsstand price was just increased to seventy-five cents. I, for the most part, don’t buy it now because, I’ve read most of it online and don’t want to pay the extra quarter. If I want to read a newspaper at lunch, I’ve been buying USAToday – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Readers like me, were the heart of newspapers in print. Readers like me, are leaving newspapers in print. And I’m pissed because, as we abandon them, they are abandoning us.

Stupid Lawyers and Their Clients: UPDATED

This post was longer, and arguably better, before the computer shut down because the battery died because I forgot to plug it in and the %#!&*(^ battery died and I only have Word 2000 on this computer which doesn't save as it goes like Word 2007 or 8 or whatever it is that I have at the office. Supply your own punctuation.

Anyway. Lawyers and their clients, sometimes should be shot. There's a guy in New York that bought a 12" sub from Subway last month. He bit into it - and nothing happened. But, he saw that in a part of the bread that he'd not got to, there was a 7" knife baked in. He says he saw the knife before "anything happened." But he did get a stomachache. He and his lawyer have filed, or are about to, file suit seeking a million bucks as damages.

As a lawyer, I offer my humble apology.

HAH! I found the original post deep in the bowels of Word. You get two for the price of one. Here's the original:

The First Thing We do, Let’s Kill All the Lawyers

The full quote from Shakespeare is of course:

“CADE Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vowsreformation. There shall be in England sevenhalfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoopedpot; shall have ten hoops and I will make it felonyto drink small beer: all the realm shall be incommon; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go tograss: and when I am king, as king I will be,--

ALL God save your majesty!

CADE I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;all shall eat and drink on my score; and I willapparel them all in one livery, that they may agreelike brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

CADE Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentablething, that of the skin of an innocent lamb shouldbe made parchment? that parchment, being scribbledo'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but sealonce to a thing, and I was never mine own mansince. How now! who's there?”

Of course if you want chaos, have no rules: but, sometimes it makes sense to kill the lawyers and the clients.

I caught a bit of Fox News earlier. They interviewed a “victim” and his lawyer. The victim went to a Subway last month in New York. He ordered a 12” sub. Baked into it was a seven inch knife. He didn’t bite down on the knife. He did get a stomachache. (There’s a vague allegation of the metal contaminating the bread that made its way into his stomach.) And he did get a lawyer. And they did sue Subway. (Said lawyer, according to a Google search, is running for the New York City council this year.)

Anyway, said victim and said lawyer are seeking $1,000,000.00 from Subway for the man’s stomachache. (My thought is that the resulting alleged stomachache is more the result of the need in most states for a physical injury to predicate a claim for pain and suffering than any actual physical injury. Again, I’m sorry for my profession.)

Said victim and said lawyer waxed on about it being a case about public food safety. Said victim opined that food safety in restaurants was important in New York because “people can’t eat at home three meals a day.”

I just finished a mediation. My proposed settlement of this important piece of litigation: the victim gets ten years of free subs at Blimpy or Jersey Mike’s, his choice (I’d take the latter). The lawyer gets the publicity she garners in the next couple of days, for better or worse, seeing that that’s what she is in it for in the first place.

Culling the Herd; or, How to Decide in a Primary Election

Georgia is conducting primary elections today. Campaigning has been very low key.


There are five candidates seeking to run as a Democrat, and almost certainly lose the November election to Republican Saxby Chambliss. One of them, Vernon Jones, the current chief executive of DeKalb County in Metro Atlanta, drew some negative press when he sent a mailing that showed himself and Barack Obama together. The problem? They hadn't been together - he photo-shopped two individual pictures to create the meeting. Senator Obama felt compelled to state publicly that he wasn't sure who Jones was and that he was not endorsing Jones. I'll sit this one out and see who survives.

Two Democrats are running to unseat Democrat Sheriff Thomas Brown in DeKalb County. Aldranon English, when asked why he's running said "I plan on competing with other law enforcement agencies outside of DeKalb County to bring in new business and residents back into our communities." Huh? Tony Scipio also wants the job: "I will provide and maintain proficient, effective and qualified Law Enforcement Services throughout the Jail Facility, Court Services, Criminal and Civil Process, while increasing the clarity and image of the Sheriff's Office and maintaining the quality of life for all citizens of DeKalb County." I guess he's the capital letter/osmosis candidate. The incumbent, Thomas Brown, actually made sense in his statements leaving me nothing to make fun of. I guess he's my guy.


The herd was a bit puny this year. I won't bore you with my culling in the other races. I used a similar process. Syntax or logic problems, you're outta here. Too many capital letters, adios. Use of the word transparency, good bye. Still too many candidates that I don't know enough about. I guess I'll leave some blanks on my electronic, chadless ballot.

I Haven't Complained About Anything In A While

Back on May 1, I wrote this post:

“I just powered up the Dell laptop. I got a popup, not identified as from Dell, that told me that my battery may be ‘nearing the end of its useful life.’ It gave me the handy option to click a button and buy another battery. Now I'm wishing I'd clicked it and confirmed that Dell had planted a little ad in the software, rather than clicking ‘don't show me this [garbage] again.’ The computer is just over a year old. I’ve used the battery, rather than the power cable, maybe ten times.Just how stupid does Dell think I am?”

Well, Dell apparently knows that it put a lousy battery in the laptop and was just giving me a heads up on what was about to happen.

I flew to Dallas last week. The day I left, my latest Netflix movie arrived, Stardust (recommended). I loaded it into the laptop on the plane, plugged the earphones in, and enjoyed the movie – for about forty minutes – until the battery died.

I charged the battery up that night. Forty-five minutes of juice was the result.

This is my third laptop, its predecessors being a Dell and an IBM. The batteries in both lasted as long as I had the computers, about three and four years respectively.


Now, Dell is selling computers with a battery that lasts a little more than a year. Dell’s price for a replacement - $134 – is about 15% of what I paid for the laptop. My next laptop probably won’t be a Dell.

Unexplained Absence

I’m in Dallas and have been since Wednesday. I just finished my mediation mentioned in this space awhile back; and, wonder of all wonders, we settled our portion of the case at a reasonable, though not wonderful, number. It is said that a good settlement is one where both sides walk away unhappy. We did better than that.

So, the good news, I don’t have to stay through the weekend and take a deposition on Monday. The bad news, we didn’t finish early enough for me to make a getaway today; so, I’m ensconced in the Comfort Inn at Mockingbird and the Stemmons Freeway – feel free to drop by if you’re in the neighborhood – there’s nothing else to do.

The big choice is trying to find a good restaurant for tonight. There’s a Crowne Plaza next door as a fallback. I’m thinking Italian.

Regular programming will resume over the weekend or first of the week.

If You Can Watch

this guy and not smile at least once, I'll send you a dollar:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

This Year, We Get Two Fourth Of Julys at Rather Than Working

Milena, a citizen of the United States of America, just wrote this. Yes, there's a link to the post, go there and put her on your list. If your lazy, read below. She seems to be what I was talking about in the positive part of my last post.

On becoming a citizen of the United States of America

Two days ago there were one thousand nine hundred and eleven of us at the ceremony. We represented 110 of the 195 established countries of this world. We were all ages, all stages of life between the young and the old, all conditions of living between the healthy and the infirm, all the mirrored disparity of the affluent and the poor.Our skins reflected the gamut of our racial spectrum. Our attire reflected the respect which we'd thought to bring to this day. We came in the company of our families, by the hands of our husbands, holding on to our wives, flanked by our children, supported by our close friends.

It was a day marked by an atmosphere of expectancy and of relief. It was grounded in the sensation of imminent completion, in the anticipation of an awaited final step in the road to naturalization.There were flags painted on the walls, anchored ceremonially in the stands that stood on the auditorium floor, there were representations in plastic and balsa of the most conspicuous symbol of Americanism, held in our waving hands. In lapels I saw small metallic likenesses of the bald eagle, a dollar bill, red and blue stars; someone sported an I am an American pin, God Save the USA even read the ink of one man's tattooed arm.

For the long hours of wait until the ceremony of oath-taking took place, a musical potpourri of John Philip Sousa marches and Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World had been put together before the rousing impulse of Anchors Aweigh gave way to yet another repeat of the moving America the Beautiful. I have no idea what the cheesy theme song from the movie Dirty Dancing was doing in the play roster but what it lacked in patriotic credentials was more than compensated by the mental distraction of its sing-along charm.

Concession stands sold the most American of food fares: hot dogs, hamburgers, fries with ketchup, sodas and, because this is Texas, there were breakfast burritos; and because this is the US, the little girl said, "they don't taste as good as McDonalds mommy," and because I have yet to taste a McDonalds burrito, I could neither confirm nor deny the veracity of her discerning taste.

When the judge officiating this ritualistic induction into the privileges of US citizenship walked into the room, we all rose except for those too frail or too sick to stand. Amongst them, Lorenzo Medina, aged 95, who sat in a wheelchair while his granddaughter held a home-made sign with the words Congratulations! and Finally! stenciled in black for all to understand the longed for arrival of this day in her grandfather's life.An honor guard of four boy scouts, the youngest of which had a brother and a father becoming citizens in this particular ceremony, marched to the center of the floor from where they saluted the judge and then the sole INS lawyer who was there to represent our collective interests before finally turning to us, the audience of applicants. This courtesy they gave felt symbolic, fraught with the intangibleness of a moment that never banked on its power, nor the emotion it did not know it could engender. Many teared up at this small token of pomp. It felt cosmic in the way that cosmic happenings seem to have no reason because they just simply are.

Afterwards, we all sang the National Anthem. All together we pledged allegiance to the Flag. As one voice we renounced our previous nationalities and promised to protect, honor, defend and obey the Constitution of the United States. We swore we would bear arms for our adoptive country. We said it would be our privilege to do so and just like that, after all the swearing and pledging, it was suddenly done.Invisibly, we were now citizens who were readying to empty a large stadium, citizens who were receiving an official document to confirm the validity of our changed state.

Citizens who climbed into their cars to go home to the routine of those same days we lived in before we were made - citizens. Citizens because the judge said so and because his word is the law.In my car seat, I sat staring at my shiny certificate. It told me nothing new, I felt nearly the same even as I understood that this proof of my citizenship proved something to others, rather than to me. That's because, for many a year, I have been a non-official citizen of this country as much as I will always be an official citizen of the Panama that saw me born.

I do not need a paper to remind me of those truths the way I do not need a sworn oath to make me be faithful to the honorable freedoms and ideals I uphold because, I believe in them so. And yet, like Mr. Medina, I mentally tacked on a finally to this moment. After 23 years of living here as the daughter of a diplomat, as an international worker and a married resident, I am now finally, a citizen in my own right rather than a sanctioned dweller. There is a resolution of sorts within that journey if only because it marks the official end of my being considered a foreigner in this land I call my home.

I celebrate that important shift in perception on this Fourth of July day. I hope it was a good one for you also. A safe Independence Day to all of you, no matter in what country you may be.

Milena

(The paragraphs are mine as Blogger sucks at copy and paste.)

A More Serious Reflection on the Statute of Liberty

You’ve heard a bit of this poem by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed on the base of the statue:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Her lamp is lifted and lit. Her welcome, not so much as they say.
We no longer welcome the world. We are afraid. Socially, economically, defensively. Probably with cause; but, remember when we took in all comers? They brought with them a burning desire to be what they could be.

I just realized this is a Fourth of July post. To start at the end, here’s something that fictional President Thomas Whitmore said:

“Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. "Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”

Perhaps, we should focus on the boldface in the quote. The aliens aren’t coming to get us just yet. But we, with our fears of each other, will be the end of us.

Damn Mexicans, welfare mothers, greedy corporations, crazy Muslims.

From a real live document:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

We were given a good start. A system of government that, to this day, mostly works. Abundant resources. DNA and culture contributed by a myriad of peoples, constantly replenished. We’ve done well, in many ways with what we’ve inherited. More and more though, we are squandering what we have been given.

“That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

So, in 2008, on Independence Day, is there cause to follow the counsel of the Declaration?

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

None of our candidates for election this fall, local, state or federal, will save us from ourselves. We are the authors of our fates, we don't have to overthrow the government to follow the counsel of our first national document.

To steal a quote from a wise blogger:

"’We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.’ ~Martin Luther King, Jr.” (From Living Next Door to Alice.)

I know that is all touchy-feely; it’s almost as bad a Rodney King’s “why can’t we all just get along?”

But, MLK and Rodney, had a point. Until we learn the lesson preached in “President Whitmore’s” speech, and written in our own Declaration of Independence, we will not fulfill the promise allowed by what we were given.

So, on this Independence Day, think about what the Declaration means and promises. Rather than fighting with each other, would it be so hard to figure out what we need, and other people need, and work a deal? Maybe easier to say and do here in the good old USA - and we aren’t doing such a good job of it; and, there’s little hope in the near future of this approach working worldwide.

That said, wasn’t the speech in the movie cool and inspiring? And we kicked alien ass!

I Didn't Know That the Statute of Liberty Has a ...

Pony tail.


I'm in the midst of watching a Ken Burns documentary on one of the local PBS stations on the history of the said statue. One of the opening images was of the lady's head, looking over her left shoulder. There it was, something I've not seen before. Her hair flies out from "behind" the statue.


You always see her from the front, mostly looking up from the ground, or from a distance, full figure, from a distance. All, never show her backside, so to speak.


So I've gone on a search on the internet. The picture above is the closest to what I saw on TV.

Not Well Done

I stopped at a chain upscale burger place, Five Guys, for lunch today. It reminded me of why I don't go to these places.

"Hey guy, welcome to Five Guys, how you doing?"

"Good, thanks."

"Ah, that's a beautiful thing."

I heard that constantly for the next twenty minutes.

"All of our food is cooked well done" read the signs plastered everywhere.

That, I found out, included the french fries and the hot dog, which they had split in half (sacrilege) and grilled way too long.

I first ran into this well done obsession ten or so years ago on a trip to South Carolina. I'd checked into the hotel late and the only thing open to get something to eat was the bar. I ordered a burger, medium, and was told that South Carolina had passed a law that required restaurants took cook hamburger at least medium well. The Five Guys, Fatburgers, In-N-Out Burgers of the world now protect themselves from liability (damn lawyers) by serving hockey pucks.

I can get a well done Wendy's burger for a buck and make it edible by slathering on mayo, mustard and ketchup. Why pay Five Guys four bucks for the same thing (not considering size difference)? And be annoyed by the constant patter while I'm eating.

Give Me Your Vote and I'll Give You...

Senator Obama, in his continuing quest to capture conservative and moderate votes, announced "his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs ….[giving] $500 million per year to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps for students. He proposes elevating the program to the 'moral center' of his administration, calling it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. " NYTimes.com, July 1, 2008.

I suppose this is no different than his move from being a pro-NAFTA free trade advocate to advocating publicly (versus privately in communication with Canadians) to renegotiate the treaty to woo union votes; or, his switch from opposing the Bush Administration's revision of the FISA law to immunize phone companies to appeal to more conservatives and moderates with a national security bent; or, his conveniently forgetting that he used to think that the DC gun ban law was constitutional to draw in some of the NRA crowd (or more likely, to mute its opposition).

Senator Obama is not America's political savior. He is not going to, and has no intention of, transforming American government. He is a left-of-center politician that would govern very much like a guy that he doesn't get along with too well: Bill Clinton.

Let's Avoid Talking About the Issues

Retired General Wesley Clark said that the fact that Senator McCain spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war says nothing about his qualifications to be President. The McCain campaign piled on. Senator Obama, on a day he was emphasizing his patriotism, rejected or disavowed or strongly objected (or whatever the current verb is) to his supporter’s comments.

Clark’s analysis is absolutely true, though it says nothing about the relative merits of the two candidates. Shouldn’t McCain’s camp quietly acknowledge that and then go on to stress that McCain has decades of experience in the Senate as opposed to Obama’s few years?

Shouldn’t Obama, note that Clark was right, as far as it goes; and, then go on to say that what he stands for, globally, is better for us than McCain’s attempt to be the third term of GWB?

They both think we’re stupid.

Where Do We Draw Lines?

First, you have to read this piece at Slate.com.

Obscenity is a moving target in law and in my mind. If I had to make a stand, I guess I’d take a libertarian view of it. If someone harms someone else, then there’s a problem. The definition of harm is then the problem.

In the Slate.com article, Google tracks searches for “orgy.” In previous posts, I’ve talked about weird searches that have arrived here. Indeed, by typing the word orgy, Google is going to put this post in the results of a search for orgy. (To increase the odds: nude, nuder, nudist.)

Before we get back to harm, let’s talk about the current legal standard for obscenity. Is the conduct within or without the accepted community standard (very simplistically put)? In, OK. Out, criminal. You then get back to having to decide what is the community, the subject of the Slate article. The Slate author says government should stay out of the business of regulating guys or girls surfing the internet for porn, unless it veers into pictures of real live children. I’m not sure that distinction captures the difference. How about this? It isn’t a crime to publish or view or engage in porn on the internet, or elsewhere, with the exception of a publisher that uses real live kids.

The problem is that there is real live harm still existing. Let’s take the issue off the web and talk about dirty books, prostitution and strip joints. Willing adults engaging in consensual activity. The problem is that there is still harm to the girls or guys selling pictures of their bodies, selling their bodies or getting money for letting people watch their bodies, not always, but it’s there. There’s harm to their families. There’s harm to the guys, girls, their families and their communities caused by disease, drugs and other effects of the conduct.

The problem with that definition of harm is that similar harm results from other conduct. Selling and using drugs and alcohol. Buying and selling guns. Gambling excessively. Driving recklessly. The list is endless; and, we aren’t going to bar most of this other harmful conduct, unless it results in the commission of another crime.

So where do we draw the obscenity line, or do we draw an obscenity line, considering or not considering the new community: the entire world that has access to the internet?

Two Movie Reviews

Pos can do this stuff in one word. I'm OK with that for the first movie, Equilibrium: Sucks. At least the first fifteen minutes which is all I got through.

Second movie is about to play, Green Mile. From the last time I watched it: Wonderful.

Local Columnist Advocates That Justice Department Break Law, As if it Needed Encouragement

Jim Wooten is the AJC's right leaning columnist (opposing Cynthia Tucker and Jay Bookman on the left). In his online column today, he wrote:

"The Justice Department’s inspector general says recruiters improperly used 'political or ideological' considerations to find and hire conservative interns. Ideology can be considered in recruiting political appointees, but not otherwise. Justice officials should get more sophisticated in screening to hire conservatives. Anybody doubt that colleges and employers look for the codes in applications and essays to achieve diversity? Ideological diversity is important, too."

Beyond the matter of encouraging the Justice Department to break the law (a skill it already has down pat) Wooten's advice is stupid. If he wants ideological diversity (which he doesn't) the way to get it is to ignore it as a factor. If you hire based on competence, you'll get some competent men and women, some competent fat and skinny people, and surprise, some competent conservatives, moderates and liberals. What you won't get are political hacks (what Wooten actually wants given his methodology).

The Second Amendment is Alive and Little Change in Gun Law is Expected

From today’s Supreme Court decision:

Logic demands that there be a link between the stated
purpose and the command. The Second Amendment
would be nonsensical if it read, “A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of
the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be
infringed.” That requirement of logical connection may
cause a prefatory clause to resolve an ambiguity in the
operative clause (“The separation of church and state
being an important objective, the teachings of canons shall
have no place in our jurisprudence.” The preface makes
clear that the operative clause refers not to canons of
interpretation but to clergymen.) But apart from that
clarifying function, a prefatory clause does not limit or
expand the scope of the operative clause. See F. Dwarris,
A General Treatise on Statutes 268–269 (P. Potter ed.
1871) (hereinafter Dwarris); T. Sedgwick, The Interpretation
and Construction of Statutory and Constitutional Law
42–45 (2d ed. 1874).3 “ ‘It is nothing unusual in acts . . . for
the enacting part to go beyond the preamble; the remedy
often extends beyond the particular act or mischief which
first suggested the necessity of the law.’ ” J. Bishop,
Commentaries on Written Laws and Their Interpretation
§51, p. 49 (1882) (quoting Rex v. Marks, 3 East, 157, 165
(K. B. 1802)).
——————
3 As Sutherland explains, the key 18th-century English case on the
effect of preambles, Copeman v. Gallant, 1 P. Wms. 314, 24 Eng. Rep.
404 (1716), stated that “the preamble could not be used to restrict the
effect of the words of the purview.” J. Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory
Construction, 47.04 (N. Singer ed. 5th ed. 1992). This rule was
modified in England in an 1826 case to give more importance to the
preamble, but in America “the settled principle of law is that the
preamble cannot control the enacting part of the statute in cases where
the enacting part is expressed in clear, unambiguous terms.” Ibid.
JUSTICE STEVENS says that we violate the general rule that every
clause in a statute must have effect. Post, at 8. But where the text of a
clause itself indicates that it does not have operative effect, such as
“whereas” clauses in federal legislation or the Constitution’s preamble,
a court has no license to make it do what it was not designed to do. Or
to put the point differently, operative provisions should be given effect
as operative provisions, and prologues as prologues.

(Sorry about the formatting but, Blogger apparently doesn't like Word as copied and pasted from a .pdf file.)

The opinion is written by Justice Scalia. Cutting through the legalese, he says that what I would call the main clause (his prefatory clause) of the Second Amendment, the Militia part, is only there in case what I would call the subjunctive clause (his operative clause) needs clarifying. If the second clause is clear, you can ignore the first clause. This isn’t English or law as I learned them. The subjunctive is always limited to the main idea. You will note that he does not cite to an American legal decision for his proposition and he equates preamble with prefatory without any explanation; but, I don’t think it matters.

What the Supreme Court has done is left intact most gun legislation, local, state and federal, intact; but, it has guaranteed a decade or so of litigation about what the constitutional limit of regulation of guns is. The D.C. law didn’t pass muster. Probably a few others won’t. The great majority will.

Contrary to the media I’ve read and heard today, I don’t think the opinion is that important.

The White House Imitates a Toddler

You’ve seen a two year old that doesn’t want to hear what his or her parent has to say. Hands go over ears. Eyes tear up as the child starts crying.

The Supreme Court told the EPA to prepare a report on some green house gas issues. EPA did so and sent the report in an Email to the White House. To date, the Email is apparently residing in the White House inbox, unopened. You won’t be surprised to learn that the White House didn’t like what it understood to be in the Report.

The toddler White House then pressured (tears and crying) the EPA to water down its report, which is going to be issued this week.

The success of this tactic is said to causing consideration of the White House holding its breath when faced with the next instance of an Agency making a decision it doesn't like.

Why Does it Cost More to Fly from Dallas to New Orleans and Back than from Atlanta to Dallas and Back?

There’s a title for you. I have to go to Dallas in July and will be there over the weekend. I just looked into flying to New Orleans for the weekend. Airfare ATL to DFW is $209. DFW to New Orleans is $250 on Southwest which is far cheaper than American and Delta. Do I bite the cost bullet and go? Or do I do some research on how to kill time in Dallas?

Comment pandering: what is there to do in Dallas? I have the what to do in New Orleans covered: good restaurants and Harrah’s Casino.