Nobody ever won a national election based on "love." Fear or hope (which is just the sunny side of fear): these are the things on which presidential campaigns are built. Not "love."

If I think that my friends in the media are about to report a story inaccurately, I don't caution them against reporting the story; I point them toward the facts. That's because I'm not TSA thug Sari Koshetz, who told journalists that they shouldn't cover blogger Jonathan Corbett's demonstration that nude scanners don't work, because Corbett "clearly has an agenda" and should not "be aided by the

Meanwhile, crime victim advocate Joe Wamback, a Newmarket resident and former federal Conservative candidate, supports the omnibus legislation. His son, Jonathan, was beaten into a coma in 1999. The Smickle ruling is “the reason we need minimum sentencing in our legislation”, he said. Defence lawyers who criticize mandatory minimum sentences are in a conflict of interest, he argued, since they derive their income from repeatedly representing people

I am, in case you didn't know it, interested in innovation in the practice of law. I don't believe that "because lawyers have always used yellow legal pads" is a good reason for using yellow legal pads. I went to the Trial Lawyers College, where I learned to use psychodrama in trial preparation and trial; I have studied improv, hypnosis, NLP, and various other disciplines that might be useful

The City of Houston wants to regulate feeding the homeless—to make it a crime for anyone to feed the homeless without registering with the city and jumping through a bunch of other hoops (PDF of proposed ordinance). In a lively online discussion among criminal-defense lawyers, Laurie Payne (not a CDL; I've no idea how she wandered into the discussion) interjected: I TOTALLY SUPPORT SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND

I wrote here, "I'm willing to give up some freedom to have fire protection and paved roads…"; one of my Twitter correspondents chided me: "He who would sacrifice liberty in the name of safety deserves neither." I don't think that's right. We give up liberty (the freedom to do what we want with our money) by paying compulsory taxes in exchange for things like firefighters, and unless

The first time I got to vote in a presidential election was in November 1988. I was a sophomore at Rice University, registered to vote in Texas. The race was between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. I voted for Ron Paul, who was running as the Libertarian candidate. I believe that the answer to "how much government do we need" is, and probably always will be,

When I saw this story: The fallout from severe layoffs at the Orleans Parish public defender's office came to an early head Friday inside a criminal courtroom. After a hearing in which Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton faced a litany of questions about his budget woes, Judge Arthur Hunter said he would farm out dozens of indigent cases to private lawyers. I thought, "that's not right." Crowded

Lawyers who look at Gerry Spence's Trial Lawyers College often see it as a cult. This is wrong. TLC is not a cult. Here's Janja Lalich and Michael Langone's checklist of cult characteristics, with my thoughts on whether they apply to the Trial Lawyers College: The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system,

Patients should be able to decide what happens to them. Doctors should not do things that harm their patients. According to Wikipedia, the principles are autonomy, the patient's right to self-determination; and beneficence, serving the best interests of the patient. Autonomy can come into conflict with beneficence when patients disagree with recommendations that health care professionals believe are in the patient's best interest. When the patient's interests