First Principles

I recently bought a new car.  I test drove an Accord I really liked, but knowing I needed to be careful not to get sucked in (and having a smarter-than-me wife who reins me in), I told them I wanted to go test drive some other brands of cars.  The saleswoman said, “That’s fine – [...]

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The very liberal Mother Jones magazine has a fascinating piece about the nominee’s lack of writing skills.  As a lawyer, I can’t stress how happy this makes me. 

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Don’t misread me here – I think Obama’s first SCOTUS nomination is horrid.  But since it was no secret that the President was going to nominate an ultra-liberal jurist whose thread of fidelity to the Constitution and the law will be severed at the first inconvenience or policy disagreement, this particular judge’s flaws provides us [...]

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Note:  I wrote most of this before President Obama announced his Sotomayor nomination.  Stand by for more on that in the coming days.
A friend of mine from law school recently posted this article from The Gawker on Facebook.  Ordinarily, my friend, although I usually disagree with him, posts interesting and thought provoking links.  Alas, this [...]

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So in today’s News of the Weird, it turns out that when Attorney General Mukasey was briefly heckled at the Federalist Society’s annual convention, the heckler was none other than Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders.

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One of our local judges running for re-election for district court has a long endorsements page on his website, with the meat of it being an essay from a retired Reno Police Chief.  One of the passages caught my eye, and not in a good way.
[Judge Bob Perry] told me on one occasion that he [...]

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No – it’s a disgrace that goes by the name of Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge.  And how do you even begin to describe the awfulness of this picture?
First of all, the only difference between Che and Hitler or Stalin is scope – all were murderers in the name of tyranny, but Che [...]

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John McCain gave a fantastic speech today on judges, surrounded by conservative legal stalwarts like Ted Olson and Fred Thompson.  It was music to the ears of anyone who believes that, when it comes to protecting the sovereignty of the individual, there is no more important issue in a presidential election than picking the right [...]

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