A quality law firm website?

You shouldn't assume that yesterday's boilerplate law firm website, which you probably already overvalue, will maintain its search engine performance or get the best price through Google's "pay per click" AdWords service unless you pay some attention to quality. There are aspects of quality you may expect - adding content to the site helps. If all you have is the web designer's initial boilerplate, think about adding some original material.

It is safe to assume that your site already has a "contact us" feature of some sort - consider a "contact us" page. Does your site have a privacy policy? What about external links - I'm not suggesting that you send your visitors off to other websites or your competitors, but apparently this is now factored into your site's algorithmically determined quality so you may wish to consider adding some links to legal reference sites, government offices, courts, or other similar resources your visitors might find useful.

Is Strength Like "Cool"?

If I remember my studies from Fonzerelli 101... If you're cool, you don't wonder if you're cool - you just are If you wonder if you're cool, you're most certainly not cool.

Does the same hold true of people who spend countless hours wondering whether something will make them "look weak"? Are the truly strong predisposed to this type of internal (or public) debate? Can a truly strong person walk away from a debacle because he isn't afraid that people will think he's weak - or doesn't care, because he knows they're wrong? Is part of strength not fearing being called or perceived as weak?

Can you truly be a strong leader if your biggest fear in life is a proliferation of bumper stickers reading "W Stands For Wimp"?

Strength and Silverbacks

I don't pretend to be an expert in anthropology, but in my recollection of the documentaries I've seen about the great apes there is an alpha male who controls his family, and who attempts to drive off any males who might threaten his position before they become large and strong enough to do so. This has given rise to the image of the 800 pound gorilla - fighting as necessary, sometimes to the death, but keeping his family in line and competitors out of his territory primarily through displays of grunting, growling, and physical strength. It is important, of course, for the alpha male not to "look weak" because this might inspire a potential competitor to try to literally knock him off his throne.

I am not sure if this is the model that people like William Kristol intend to follow when they express their never-ending fears that if the U.S. does one particular thing or the other it will "look weak". People like Kristol seem to use this argument to shape a particular course of action - it becomes an argument of convenience where any course of action they endorse makes the U.S. "look strong", and anything else makes the U.S. "look weak". Unfortunately, these arguments seem to have been fully embraced by the White House, which (despite having tried to make us "look strong" through an invasion of Iraq, the aftermath of which is now said to make us "look weak") seems petrified of "looking weak".

I could argue first that these notions of "strength" are less thoughtful than those of the literal 800-pound gorilla, who attempts to rule over his family until he is frail and elderly by never involving himself in a fight he can't decisively win. The pre-9/11 complaints of the U.S. as an 800-pound gorilla were more in line with perceptions of an alpha male gorilla - with the strongest military in the world, the U.S. had a lot of weight to throw around (even without firing a shot). This seemingly aggravated some on the right who took the position that it is worthless to have a strong military unless you used it - but there is no question but that the U.S. was perceived as strong. Perhaps no moreso than by those on the right who wished us to engage in active military intervention in a number of nations, including Iraq, so we could bend or force the rest of the world into the image we desired. (You know... like Kristol's club, PNAC.)

Yet it seems that it is the Kristol/PNAC approach to the world that makes the U.S. seem weak. They confuse the power of having a might military force at your disposal with the power of that mighty military. We kicked Iraq's door down in a most impressive manner - but the manner in which the Bush Administration subsequently drove us into a ditch in its handling of the occupation (Kristol's metaphor) now supposedly make us "look weak". So we have to attack additional nations, like Syria and Iran, so we can again "look strong". It has been noted that this presupposes that we can control the perceptions of others - a valid point. But on a more mundane level, perhaps the problem is that the easiest way to look strong is to intimidate your way to victory without having to physically fight. And perhaps the real problem is that once you "look weak" in the outcome of even a single fight, your image is diminished and (as Mike Tyson will attest) can't be restored even through a string of additional fights against easier opponents.

Perhaps Kristol's vision of geopolitics derives from listening to Kenny Rogers songs, where the good guy always wins.

A Solution for Lebanon?

Oh, it's probably ultimately unworkable, but so is every other solution.

The context: Israel (and most of the rest of the world, apparently including most Arab states) wants to see Hezbollah disarmed. It could not achieve disarmament through eighteen years of occupation of southern Lebanon, and is now attempting to achieve disarmament through an air campaign which will, in all likelihood, destroy much of Hezbollah's arsenal while increasing Lebanese and Arab enmity toward Israel and sympathies with Hezbollah - like the occupation, a recipe for short-term gain and long-term pain. Israel has never wanted any significant international military force on its borders (and after the last time it was attempted not many foreign militaries have much interest in trying to act as peacekeepers). Israel distrusts the United Nations, and no UN force would be of sufficient size and strength to disarm Hezbollah.

So... How about trying something completely different? Bring in a UN force to monitor Lebanon's borders with Syria. Bring in a sufficient foreign miltary and police force to maintain order and stability in those areas of Lebanon north of the Litani River while the Lebanese military responds to Hezbollah. And make Lebanon and its military, supported by contributions of foreign training and military hardware, responsible for policing and controlling areas controlled by Hezbollah, including Lebanon's border with Israel. (Ideally, subject to practical limitations and security issues, the Arab states which oppose Hezbollah could be enticed to contribute manpower to any police force required as part of this effort, such that under most day-to-day circumstances the man on the street in Lebanon would encounter the face of an Arab policeman rather than a foreign soldier.) The people of Lebanon will see for themselves in Hezbollah is willing to kill Lebanese soldiers in order to maintain its military operations - something that should bring some sense of sobriety to the notion of Hezbollah as fighting for Lebanese independence and freedom from foreign occupation. And it keeps western forces off of the front lines.

If this plan were to work you should end up with a well-trained, well-disciplined Lebanese army which can ultimately maintain control of the entire nation, reducing the likelihood that Hezbollah will again be able to develop a significant militia. Perhaps a Lebanon that looks something like Jordan - but with an elected government instead of a monarchy.

Cosby on Poverty

I had thought that enough time had passed that Bill Cosby would no longer be subjected to screeds accusing him of being unfair to the African American poor. Wrong. Michael Eric Dyson just can't stop pouring it on.

By convincing poor blacks that their lot in life is purely of their own making, Cosby draws on harsh conservative ideas that overlook the big social factors that continue to reinforce poverty: dramatic shifts in the economy, low wages, chronic underemployment, job and capital flight, downsizing and outsourcing, and crumbling inner-city schools.

None of these can be overcome by the good behavior of poor blacks.

Dyson claims that the problem is that Bill Cosby is looking only at individual choice, while disregarding societal issues which affect those choices. But couldn't it be said of Dyson that his arguments minimize the importance of individual choice while holding greater society responsible for poverty? Is there any reason why poverty cannot be attributed, quite correctly, to both problems with society and to poor choices by individuals? Dyson would not claim that poor people are inherently criminal, or programmed for teen pregnancy - quite the opposite:

In rigged town-hall meetings, Cosby assembles community folk and experts who agree with his take on black poverty: that it's the fault of the poor themselves.

It's often difficult to point out just how harmful that sentiment is, because most black folk do believe strongly in taking their destiny into their own hands. They believe in hard work and moral decency. They affirm the need for education and personal discipline. When they hear Cosby say that poor black folk should go to work, stay out of jail, raise their children properly and make sure they go to school, they nod their heads in agreement.

So these are "rigged town-hall meetings" which are attended by people who Dyson argues actually do reflect the majority opinion? That's an interesting way to "rig" a meeting.

Presumably these people agree with Bill Cosby that individual choice - the choice to take the path they model, or such individual choices as becoming an unwed parent, joining a gang, committing crime, or vandalizing the neighborhood are not made inevitable by poverty. Sure, societal problems can make it more difficult to make the correct choices, and from a "big picture" perspective you can show correlations between certain of society's ills and a greater number of poor choices by those affected by the ills. But is it not true that many of the problems can be fixed, or at least improved, from the bottom up as well as from the top down? And given the tendencies of today's society, is it really constructive to sit around and wait for a top-down fix, while ignoring the individual choices which collectively make inner city life so miserable for so many?

Brooks on Middle East Democracy

Today's column by David Brooks is worth reading, if you are able to peek behind the firewall. The bulk of the column is an unfortunately brief synopsis of the debate of two experts on the Middle East, Reuel Gerecht and Jeffrey Goldberg. Gerecht argued that democracy will in the short-term result in extremist governments with a profoundly anti-Israel bias, but that this pain is a necessary part of developing the institutions integral to democracy:

The only way to reform the Middle East, Gerecht concluded, is by changing political institutions and enduring as the spirit of democratic self-government slowly changes society. There will be a period of fever, but the fever will break the disease.

Goldberg argued that even if the roots of democracy were to survive such an initial period, such a period could easily stretch on for more than a century of jihadism against Israel and, internally, tolerance of such acts as "honor killings".

In Goldberg's view, cultural reform has to precede political reform. The West should continue to champion the Arab world's liberal modernizers, who believe in pluralism and human rights and who may have deeper roots in society than we think.

Gerecht notes that democractic movements have made some real advances; Goldberg notes that even with their participation in democracy key regional players such as Hamas and Hezbollah will always embrace Jihad.

Brooks himself sees the Bush Administration as taking Gerecht's position that institutions shape behavior, and "hanging tough" on the issue of democratic reform. And he argues that neither model is "winning" but that a worse outcome would be to return to the stablility of autocratic regimes such as those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia which spawed 9/11. (Brooks doesn't mention the sad state of democratic reform in those nations.)

Rather than asking "who is right", perhaps the better approach is to ask how the two models can complement each other. That is, accept Goldberg's position that we need to change hearts and minds now to move people away from jihadism, but also to accept Gerecht's position that we need to build the institutions of democracy in order for it to be sustainable over the long term. Even if we assume the best of intentions, the Bush Administration's policies appear to be paving the way to jihadism. I'm not sure that Brooks would disagree; I think to the degree he treats the models as incompatible it is so that he can praise the Bush Administration for its embrace of the institutional approach without confronting its present failings.

Gerrymandered Nation

I saw Joe Scarborough joining in those on the right who presage that the Democrats will "take back Congress" this fall, while giving some cues which suggest that his prediction was not necessarily sincere. Not one word about the gerrymandering which has removed any real danger of election loss for the vast majority of Members of Congress.

What's going on? It's a "can't lose" for the right-wing talking heads. If they are right, they can pat themselves on the back for their "unbiased" predictions. If they're wrong, and I think most expect to be wrong, they can describe it as a great victory for the Republicans and a vindication of the President.

Personally, I think this is part of a coordinated media campaign.

Blogs and Negative Campaign Ads

In the last Presidential election, we saw certain blogs and websites emerge which professed to assess the veracity of campaign ads and statements by the candidates. Although I haven't been following the race particularly closely, I have noticed that in Ned Lamont's supporters in his race against Joe Lieberman choose not to wait for these sites to analyze Lieberman's ads - they link to the ads up on their unofficial Lamont weblog and make fun of them. It also seems to be one of the first places that Lamont's new ads apepar. Should the responses go over the top, well, it's unofficial. (And Lamont's campaign is doing quite well.)

I don't know how effective this is yet, but given that it is an inexpensive way to publish a response to an opponent's attack ads, and if done right may be one of the first places the media looks when covering campaign ads (you know - those "We don't agree with negative campaigning, but we will now play in full candidate X's latest attack ad" segments), I think we can expect to see this type of blog commentary in pretty much every contested race in the fall.

Limited Quantities Available?

Apparently eBay is trying to break into a new market.

That Tenacious Photocopier

It's always willing to put in overtime.

With three submissions in the lower court ending in defeat, it's time for an application for leave to appeal!

The best part - for this one they get to submit five copies to the court!

Everything Old Is New... to Thomas Friedman

Behind the Firewall, the New York Times' ostensible expert on the Middle East writes,

When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today it is easy to feel that you’ve been to this movie before and that you know how it ends - badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we’d better understand it.

What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world.

This is new? Are we using geological measures of time? (Ten thousand years ago there were no elections at all, and now, suddenly....)

While Friedman suggests that this phenomenon is mostly a concern in nations like Iraq or Lebanon, or in the Palestinian Territories, where political factions may also contol their own militias. Is it truly a secret to Thomas Friedman that there have long been significant concerns over the possibility that democratic elections in the Middle East that anti-Western and Islamist groups may gain power or even control of the government if free elections were truly permitted in Saudi Arabia or Egypt?

The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.

Is the problem, then, that there are Islamist parties, that there are parties which control militias, or just that there are Islamist parties that control militias? And in which of those regions are the Islamist parties actually complaining about democracy, or fearing that it might spread? When you're winning elections you generally want democracy to spread (even if you aren't particularly to maintaining it in the longer-term).

To Friedman, democracy seems to mean "You should hold free and fair elections, and vote for whomever you want... as long as you elect the right person and party." Am I wrong, or are the shifts in mindset required for democracy and progressive government to take hold largely generational in nature - if you grow up with them, they seem like second-nature, but they're hard to impose upon a population which is used to something else. (And, unfortunately, they seem easier to tear down than to build up.) To state the obvious, even in the absence of private militias holding an election, even if it is free or fair, is no guarantee that a nation will be transformed into a democracy, nor is it a guarantee that the elected leader will be the person Thomas Friedman would prefer.

That's The Best Evidence He Can Find?

Describing how bloggers have embraced conspiracy theories, Eugene Robinson provides only one example to back up his claim:

Almost immediately after Lay's death was reported last Wednesday, bloggers began speculating that he had somehow faked his demise, which "conveniently" came just before his sentencing for his role in what was arguably the most spectacular business fraud in American history.

"I wonder how many doctors you need to bribe to fake your own death," Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip "Dilbert," wrote in his blog. "Is one enough? Or is there some special double-checking that the police do if the guy is heading for prison? I'm sure there's a body, but I wonder if it's his. I have a bad feeling that some pizza delivery guy's last words to his co-workers were 'Hey, I have a delivery to that Enron guy's house! Wish me luck!' "

Scott Adams? Isn't this a bit like citing to The Onion as evidence that American newspapers don't fact-check? (Or is it more like citing to a Eugene Robinson column....) For some reason, Robinson doesn't mention Adams' implication in the same post that Ken Lay may actually have been Burt Lahr.

Scott Adams apparently likes to write about conspiracy theories because they provide easy fodder for what he does - making jokes.

My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says the world is being run by a handful of ultra-rich capitalists, and that our elected governments are mere puppets. I sure hope it’s true. Otherwise my survival depends on hordes of clueless goobers electing competent leaders. That’s about as likely as a dog pissing the Mona Lisa into a snow bank.

The only way I can get to sleep at night is by imagining a secret cabal of highly competent puppetmasters who are handling the important decisions while our elected politicians debate flag burning and the definition of marriage.

It’s the only explanation for how the governments of the world could be staffed with morons and yet everything still runs okay, sort of. Granted, things aren’t perfect, but when you hear our leaders talk, you have to wonder why our energy policy doesn’t involve burning asbestos on playgrounds. There must be some competent people pulling the strings behind the curtain, adjusting the money supply, twiddling with interest rates, choosing the winners for American Idol, and that sort of thin

I know it's fashionable for editorial columnists to dump on bloggers these days, but c'mon.

CleanFlicks Struts Its Stuff

I read about the judicial shut-down of CleanFlicks on TPMCafe.com (where it's referenced as CleanFlix), and thought I would take a look at their site to see what the fuss was about. They claim that their editing is pretty seamless (you don't realize that you're watching an edited DVD), and they seem intent on demonstrating their prowess right on their main page.

Is this a seamlessly cleaned up polygamous family from HBO's "Big Love"?

Note that they also depict this family's house - which is very large with a three car garage. Three cars? Could it be a combination of the three neighboring houses (one for each wife) from Big Love? A news article explains,

As many as 90 video stores nationwide -- about half of them in Utah -- purchase movies from CleanFlicks, Lines said. It's unclear how the ruling may effect those stores.

There you go....

(Insert here any obligatory apologies to the good citizens of Utah.)

Oh, That'll Happen....

History Professor Greg Grandin suggests that President Bush should press Mexico to undertake a recount of its Presidential election results:

The official tally gives Mr. Calderón a razor-thin lead, and there are credible reports of significant irregularities that could, at best, weaken the legitimacy of a Calderón presidency, and at worst, lead to escalating protests. The disputed votes include the 904,000 annulled ballots that come primarily from regions that went heavily for Mr. López Obrador, as well as discrepancies between the numbers handed in by polling stations and the actual ballots cast.

The best thing the United States can do now is to support the push for a recount and to refrain from calling on Mr. López Obrador to concede.

He seems sincere.... Is he a professor of ancient history?

Oops - I missed an element

I had previously described the David Brooks path to a successful life:

The wealthy of our society are able to hire nannies, who can love their children and teach them how to resist the temptation of marshmallows before the age of three. Children of privilege, having both the love of an nanny and the power of self-distraction inculcated within them by the age of three, will be all-but-guaranteed that a suitable personality in high school, and success in their future lives. Unfortunately, this may leave the nanny too busy for her own children, who will succumb to the temptation of marshmallows and thus fail to achieve the American dream. Because, darn it all, good child care is just too expensive to provide to people who can't afford to pay for it themselves.

The missing element, filled in by Brooks a couple of days ago, is that the love of a good nanny raises the child's oxytocin levels. So I guess we can fix all of society's problems pretty easily, as oxytocin is injectable. Apparently oxytocin also makes school more interesting:

The dropout rates are astronomical because humans are not machines into which you can input data. They require emotion to process information. You take kids who didn't benefit from stable, nurturing parental care and who have not learned how to form human attachments, and you stick them in a school that functions like a factory for information transmission, and the results are going to be horrible.

The Gates Foundation recently sponsored focus groups with dropouts. The former students knew how detrimental dropping out would be. Most were convinced they could have graduated if they wanted to. But their descriptions of school amounted to a portrait of emotional disengagement: teachers were burned out and boring; discipline was lacking; classes weren't challenging; there weren't enough tutors and wasn't anyone to talk to; parents were uninvolved.

Brooks also notes, "In humans, oxytocin levels rise during childbirth, breast feeding and sex." Hm. I wonder if Brooks would nominate this gal for a teacher of the year award - she seems to be three for three.

There's No Such Thing As Defensive Medicine

At least, not in the sense that doctors, their insurers and their lobbyists contend.

The argument behind "defensive medicine" is that doctors are so fearful of being sued that they order unnecessary medical tests in order to avoid the possibility of being incorrect in a diagnosis. From a legal perspective this makes little sense, given that doctors dictate the standard of care. If a doctor can meet the standard of care defined by his own profession without prescribing the "unnecessary" test, there's no malpractice suit. Sure, it can be a bit more complicated than that if you have disagreement as to the standard of care. But if 99% of the doctors in a particular legal jurisdiction would not order the test, even in the unlikely event that an expert witness would assert that a violation of the standard of care had occurred, a plaintiff would have a hard time arguing that they're all falling below the standard of practice for that region.

Doctors' lobbies also like to assert that malpractice litigation is a "lottery" which has nothing to do with the question of whether or not malpractice actually occurred. If doctors truly believe that, then they wouldn't be ordering additional tests - as by their own claims the quality of their treatment (poor, good, great, phenomenal, or "defensive") has nothing to do with whether or not they will be sued. It would be nice if, on this issue, the lobbyists would decide which horse they want to ride. (But if nobody ever calls you on it....)

Further, there is no evidence that any tort reform measures have had any impact on so-called "defensive medicine". As it becomes harder and harder for patients - even those severely and clearly harmed by terrible doctors - to sue their doctors, you would expect that levels of so-called "defensive medicine" would decline. The fact that it doesn't suggests either or both of the following: First, "defensive medicine" is not so much about malpractice, as it is about being right. That is, a doctor is being perhaps excessively cautious in prescribing additional testing that the doctor does not believe to be necessary, but would rather be 99.999% sure in a diagnosis than a mere 99.9%... or 95% or 90%. Kevin MD apparently believes this to be the case, even as he continues to blame lawyers for this excess of medical caution:

Often, defensive tests are phrased like this: "I don't think that your headache is anything to worry about, but 'just to be on the safe side' (or 'just to be complete', or 'just so we're not missing anything'), let's do a CT scan to rule out a tumor." Patients will then be appreciative your thoroughness and completeness. It's really quite a positive-reinforcing phenomenon.

So the doctor is rewarded by the patient's gratitude, and the patient's being impressed by the thoughtful, complete care. The doctor bills for the services through the patient's insurance company, profiting from the supposed "waste" of defensive medicine. The insurance company agrees that the tests are medically necessary and thus pays for them. And, like everything else that is wrong with the world, all of this is somehow magically the fault of trial lawyers. Second, even if it is partially motivated by fears of liability, those fears are either exaggerated or irrational. If by objective measure the chances of being held liable for malpractice, and the maximum payout for any successful malpractice claim, go down, to the extent that "defensive medicine" is truly inspired by fear of litigation it too should decline. The fact that it does not means either that doctors are not responding rationally to the realities of malpractice litigation, or that one has nothing to do with the other. Over at DB's Medical Rants, a commenter claims,

A personal example: appendicitis. I was nearly alone among surgeons in my community, in wanting to see the patient before deciding if a CT was needed. Virtually every other would hardly take a call from the ER if the study hadn’t already been done. I felt that in the vast majority of cases, the diagnosis could be made on clinical grounds. And yet, in seeing a patient and diagnosing appendicitis, and recommending surgery absent a CT scan, I always felt a bit “out there,” and always felt the need to let a patient know it could be ordered and that in fact most would order it. It was, I’m happy to say, a rarity that a patient requested it after my full explanation. What’s the point? You tell me. I can’t figure it all out.

From a malpractice standpoint, the point would be that doctors are prescribing tests which have nothing to do with potential liability. The fear here is what? Ordering an appendix surgery on the basis of a physical examination and blood tests, but having it turn out that the patient's appendix is healthy? In what state would a lawsuit over such a misdiagnosis be economically viable for a plaintiff's law firm? What type of damage award might the patient expect? (Dare I venture, none and none?)

In Dr. Centor's "rant" preceding that comment, trial lawyers are somehow held responsible for the lazy practice of medicine:

As I consider defensive medicine, what I see (and admittedly I cannot quote a study) is testing prior to a careful history and physical. Why? Because one can always defend a test result, and the history and physical are not considered as definitive. Most patients who come through an Emergency Room in 2006 have a CT scan (I am being a bit hyperbolic here, but not overly hyperbolic). Ask any radiologist, internist or family physician about the number of unnecessary CT scans in ERs and they will all tell stories.

Let's see.... The doctor charges for the consultation (apparently without actually performing any service beyond referring the patient for testing), the doctor gets to see many more patients per hour by avoiding the time-consuming tasks of taking a thorough history and performing a physical, the lab charges for the tests requested, and the doctor charges again to tell the patient the test results... and with some doctors, the test is performed by a clinic in which the doctor holds a financial stake, such that the doctor profits further from the administration of what is argued to be an unnecessary test. Yet somehow it is the fault of trial lawyers that doctors don't bother to physically examine their own patients? It is defensive medicine to not physically examine a patient?

Dr. Centor asserts in relation to defensive medicine, " physicians and lawyers probably cannot have a constructive discussion on this point because we do not share a common understanding of vocabulary." If that's true, it would appear to be because as far as doctors are concerned, defensive medicine is something that is done by "other doctors," but rarely if ever by themselves. It is responsible for billions of dollars in medical costs, as long as you don't ask for any of those claimed costs to be supported by evidence. It is supposedly driven by tort litigation, even though its claimed prevalence is independent of "tort reform" measures which limit patient access to courts and suppress malpractice litigation. And any unnecessary or redundant testing is passed off as being "defensive medicine" even though an awful lot of that testing is actually documented as being the result of self-referrals (doctors administering the tests themselves, or having tests done at facilities in which they hold a financial interest), or within the context of clinics which need to maintain a level of appointments for their high-cost medical medical imaging equipment which would otherwise operate at a loss.

Dr. Centor gives the example of stroke patients getting "both an MRI and a CT of the head for routine strokes" where no useful additional information is likely to be obtained through the second test. He gives no evidence that the double-testing is in any way related to defensive medicine, or has ever helped a physician facing a malpractice suit over the inadequate treatment of a stroke victim. But such redundant testing would be extraordinarily profitable for the facility administering the tests.

I guess the problem is one of language - until doctors can articulate what "defensive medicine" is, when it occurs, how to recognize it, what it costs, and how it actually relates to the tort system, and why tests which could as easily (or more easily) be explained by other factors should be included within the definition, then no, they're not likely to reach any significant level of agreement with trial lawyers.

Web Design... by the Queen of Hearts?

Pretty much everybody has seen websites which, at particular widths or in particular browsers, do not display as the designer intended. Usually the problems are minor, and you may not even notice them. But sometimes they can't be missed. A case in point:

Narrow the browser window, and... "Off with his head!"

Pandering

If you don't think McCain (like most of his Senate brethren) will pander to the more reactionary elements of American society, he and 65 other senators beg to differ.

Oh, isn't that special, Debbie. Maybe if Ned Lamont loses the primary race, he can come to Michigan and run against Stabenow.

I guess it depends upon what you mean by "margin of error"

If they mean in the opinions of the public, and not the poll itself, their margin of error should be, oh, 22 - 28% higher.

The percentage of Americans who say the president has "a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq" has dropped to 31%, a new low. That's still higher than the 25% who say congressional Democrats have a clear plan for Iraq.

The telephone survey of 1,000 adults has an error margin of +/-3 percentage points.

Oh, I get it now - they mean "transparent".

David Bernstein Attacks Presidential Signing Statements

Bernstein decries signing statements as reflecting the attitude of, "Whatever. It's only a law." Well, not really. But if you're a Volokh reader you already suspected that.

Our Schools Lag Behind Those In [Insert Asian Country of Choice]

Today, behind the firewall, Nicholas Kristof warns us that our schools lag way behind those in Japan... I mean, China.

But kids in the good schools in Chinese cities are leaving our children in the dust. ... Yet, there isn't any magic to it. One reason Chinese students learn more math and science than Americans is that they work harder at it. They spend twice as many hours studying, in school and out, as Americans.

He also describes the intense pressures that Japane..., er, Chinese students face to succeed in school.

Yet if the Chinese government takes math and science seriously, children and parents do so even more. At Cao Guangbiao elementary school in Shanghai, I asked a third-grade girl, Li Shuyan, her daily schedule. She gets up at 6:30 a.m. and spends the rest of the day studying or practicing her two musical instruments.

So if she gets her work done and has time in the evening, does she watch TV or hang out with friends? "No," she said, "then I review my work and do extra exercises."

A classmate, Jiang Xiuyuan, said that during summer vacation, his father allows him to watch television each evening - for 10 minutes.

The Chinese students get even more driven in high school, as they prepare for the national college entrance exams.

Even more driven? I guess that means no more music lessons, and the end of the ten minute daily television interludes during the summer break? Kristof relates all of this to the U.S.:

I don't think we could replicate the Chinese students' drive even if we wanted to. But there are lessons we can learn - like the need to shorten summer vacations and put far more emphasis on math and science.

Oh, that's helpful.

By now you've figured out that, at least in my opinion, we've heard this all before, back in the 1980's when Japanese schools were described as superior to U.S. schools, with Japanese businesses on the verge of dominating the world. We didn't learn much then, so we won't learn much now. Our more recent education "reforms", such as mandatory homework policies, create more busy work for kids but I have yet to see even the slightest evidence that they improve school performance - is there any? Shortening summer vacations means a number of things - air conditioning buildings in the hottest months of the year (some of which don't even have air conditioning systems installed), paying to keep schools open additional hours, paying teachers to teach additional classes.... One of the reasons for the shrinking U.S. public school academic year is cost-savings.

Putting an emphasis on math and science ? That's not a new theme for Kristof. Yet between the Sebastian "We don't need no stinkin' science" Mallabys of the world, and the fact that we (as a nation) don't really care about maths and sciences (and cutting them from a school's curriculum can also save money), don't count on it.

Just look at another of the latest "school reform" bandwagons - capping funds which can be spent on administration. The astroturf organization which is spearheading that initiative classifies expenses to support the football team as educational - just like classroom instruction. A school library, librarian, library books? Isn't it obvious - administrative expenditures. Keep the football team but cut the library, and you're on the right track for education in today's America.

Same-Sex Schools

All the rage among some in Michigan who know (and perhaps also care) nothing about education, but nonetheless control the state legislature? Same-sex schools. Meanwhile, what do studies suggest?

Teaching girls in single-sex schools, long an obsession of many parents worried about their daughters being distracted by boys, makes no difference to their educational attainment according to one of the most comprehensive studies of the way children learn.

Go figure.

A Bit Pricey For a Buffet Lunch

Oops - I guess that's Buffett.

Still, as investments go, I would probably instead pick up a few (and yes, for the uninitiated, even at half a million dollars I do mean a few) shares of Berkshire Hathaway.

Feminism and Child Care

I had mostly forgotten the reaction to Linda Hirshman's American Prospect article, Homeward Bound, in which she suggests that feminism is largely a failure, and that intelligent, educated women who stay home to raise children are wasting their potential, if not their lives. Hirshman's thesis to me seems a bit attenuated. Her admittedly judgmental position on the value of caring for a child seems to drive her conclusion - if you were to start by assuming that highly-paid positions in business and industry were beneath human dignity, it would just as naturally follow that women (and men) were wasting their lives by taking positions of power and influence. (She could even support this thesis by referencing the significant number of people who have publicly professed to be leaving their positions of power and influence "to spend more time with" their families.)

I also disagree with any suggestion that it is somehow a failure of feminism, or the fault of feminism, that where a professional takes time away from a traditional career, that person will often have difficulty later getting back on track in that career. The fact that men don't face the same pressure to take time off of work to raise families? Granted, that's true - so if we presuppose that feminism was supposed to erase that inequality, its perpetuation becomes a failure of feminism. But that seems like something of an overstatement of the case. Further, it is my impression that a father who takes time off for the "daddy track" would likely face greater obstacles returning to the workforce than a mother, so perhaps the problem is not so much one of "feminism" but of the fact that attitudes like Hirshman's - that child-rearing tasks are unworthy - are pervasive. Beyond that, it only makes sense that somebody who takes a few years away from a career will not get credit for the time they would otherwise have spent, the connections they would otherwise have made, and the experience they would otherwise have gained, in their jobs.

Where I do agree with Hirshman is that women who believe they would be wasting their lives if they stayed home with their kids should not be expected to feel guilty about either not having children or returning to work after their children are born. It similarly follows that women who attempt to stay home with their kids, but find that they would feel more fulfilled in returning to work (or are left with the impression that they are wasting their lives) should not be expected to feel guilty about returning to work. But by the same token, if a highly intelligent, highly educated, and highly capable professional discovers upon having a child that she loves staying home and caring for her child, people like Hirshman have no business trying to make her feel guilty or to suggest that she is somehow wasting her life. Get that? It's her life.

I also question Hirshman's attitude toward child care tasks as beneath professional women. There's a woman in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gretchen Preston, who had a different attitude toward child care, and since the mid-1980's has built a small empire in the high-end child care business. I would venture that she earns more than most of the professionals Hirshman views as working in "worthy" careers - while providing them with the child care they need to continue in those careers. Would Hirshman nonetheless view Preston as having failed to meet her potential?

Evictions from a "Manufactured Home Community"

Under Michigan law, as is quite reasonable, landlords are granted immunity for damage which results to a tenant's property incidental to their executing a lawful order of eviction. Or, at least, that's the way I always read the statute:

(2) Any tenant in possession of premises whose possessory interest has been unlawfully interfered with by the owner, lessor, licensor, or their agents shall be entitled to recover the amount of his actual damages or $200.00, whichever is greater, for each occurrence and, where possession has been lost, to recover possession. Unlawful interference with a possessory interest shall include:

* * *

(b) The removal, retention, or destruction of personal property of the possessor.

* * *

(3) The provisions of subsection (2) shall not apply where the owner, lessor, licensor, or their agents can establish that he:

(a) Acted pursuant to court order ...

Many years ago I worked with a highly ethical manufactured home community, such that I was never asked to interpret the boundaries of this statute. But if asked, I would have indicated that to me the immunity extended only to damage incidental to the execution of a court's order. That is, nobody in his right mind would confuse an order of eviction with a court's grant of permission to trash a tenant's property, but if something were accidentally dropped, dinged, dented or damaged during the eviction process the landlord would be safe from a lawsuit. With a manufactured home, that would include damage incidental to the removal of the home from its foundation and utilities hookups, and which might occur during transport due to the contents being unsecured.

Boy, would my advice have been excessively cautious. You see, as it turns out (albeit by the terms of an unpublished and therefore non-precedentially binding decision) the landlord and his agents would enjoy absolute immunity for any damage they caused to the tenant's property, even if resulting in the total loss or destruction of the property.

Plaintiffs contend that nothing in the law provides immunity against the willful, wanton, or negligent destruction of the tenant's property. However, under the plain language of MCL 600.2918(2)(b) and (3)(a), a lessor and its agents are protected from claims alleging the unlawful "removal, retention, or destruction" of the possessor's personal property if the lessor and its agents acted pursuant to a court order. Although the alleged conduct in this case is disturbing and the disposition harsh, we emphasize that even under the process pursued in this case (as opposed to the arguably more proper mobile home proceedings), plaintiffs had notice and opportunity to avoid the misfortune that ensued.

(emphasis in original). First, as I read the facts outlined by the court, the Plaintiffs were not alleging negligent destruction - they were alleging intentional destruction (and conversion) of their property:

According to plaintiffs, defendants began using electrical saws to demolish a sun porch attached to the mobile home and were throwing shrubs, trees, and large pieces of wood from the porch through closed windows of the home, breaking the glass, while Annette Sickles was still inside the home. Plaintiffs asserted that they asked Stern Construction to stop damaging their home and its contents, but Stern Construction refused. Plaintiffs alleged that Hometown America was peeling off aluminum skirting and throwing it on a trailer with the intent of later selling it at a recycling center.

Plaintiffs claimed they again asked defendants to stop so they could retrieve some of their personal belongings, but defendants again refused to stop. According to plaintiffs, they stopped removing items from the home because those items were for all practical purposes destroyed; Annette Sickles then began removing personal belongings from a shed located on the lot. At that point defendants allegedly stopped destroying the home and immediately proceeded to "cut up" the shed, which resulted in its walls collapsing and destroying plaintiffs' personal property in the shed. Plaintiffs asserted that several of defendants' employees were laughing while they worked.

According to plaintiffs, on July 28, 2004, Stern Construction transferred the home and its contents to a dump. In alleged accordance with specific instructions from Hometown America, Stern Construction destroyed the home by bulldozing it into a hole and then covering it with garbage. Plaintiffs stated that everything they owned was destroyed except for a few items they were able to remove.

(emphasis added).

You see, to me the requirement that the landlord and its agents "Acted pursuant to court order" in order to gain immunity suggests that there is no immunity when the landlord and its agents engage in acts which cannot reasonably be construed as being a part of the execution of an order of lawful eviction. Intentionally destroying a tenant's property, stripping aluminum siding for resale, or having the remaining structure bulldozed into a landfill a day after the eviction is complete would fall outside of the scope of the eviction order, and would thus not be protected.

I'm not entirely sure that the Court of Appeals really intends to excuse this type of intentional misconduct - at least in future cases. If they did, presumably, they would not have characterized the alleged acts as "negligence". The acts described don't seem particularly different from a landlord's completing an eviction from a house or apartment by hauling the tenant's possessions down to the street, then selling them in a yard sale, selecting desired items to take and keep, or running over them with a truck. Negligence? (The Court of Appeals decision recited that the Plaintiffs' claimed conversion. Negligent conversion?)

As for the notion that the tenants brought it on themselves by not acting sooner? Of course they could have taken steps to avoid or minimize their damages - but it's the case any time a tenant is subjected to forcible eviction, so I'm not seeing how it is relevant to the court's analysis.

Misdirected Mail

I've received misdirected mail before but, as distances go, this is a new record for me.

At least it wasn't something important, like... oh, a tax document?

Another Disaster Relief Scandal

CJR Daily congratulates the AP for covering a neglected story:

A disaster relief company that took supplies that were supposed to go to Sept. 11 rescuers at the World Trade Center escaped punishment after the government discovered its own employees had stolen artifacts from ground zero, once-secret federal documents show.

* * *

The FBI developed evidence from whistleblowers that the company had dispatched trucks to the warehouse and loaded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donated bottled water, clothes, tools and generators to be moved to Minnesota in a plot to sell some for profit, the records show.

Better a cover-up than a scandal, right?

TV of the Future

In the future, will your TV viewing be of on-demand video, accompanied by commercials automatically selected to match your anticipated interests, perhaps also offered in custom lengths, formats, and at custom intervals? Quite possibly.

I'm not sure what that would mean for the Superbowl.

Leaving No Mossy Stone Unturned

In the resolution of her drug scandal, despite having been caught on tape, Kate Moss does even better than Rush Limbaugh:

Kate Moss will not be charged with drug offences following the publication of photographs showing her apparently snorting cocaine as there is no "realistic prospect" of conviction, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

Why won't conviction be possible? Because, despite media reports that it was cocaine, the police determined that it is impossible to determine what substance Moss was snorting in the video.

"The film footage provides an absolutely clear indication that Ms Moss was using controlled drugs and providing them to others," [Rene Barclay of the Crown Prosecution Service] said.

"However, in the absence of any forensic evidence, or direct eyewitness evidence about the substance in question, its precise nature could not be established."

How much did it cost for the police and prosecutors to figure out that they didn't have sufficient evidence to bring charges? A mere £250,000 ($460,000). I guess pretty much every police officer in the country got to watch the video and bill the time to the investigation....

Another Lost $Billion in Reconstruction Funds....

But this time it's not in Iraq.

The Bush Administration doesn't do many things well, but when it comes to graft, fund-raising, and outright incompetence, they stand head and shoulders above most prior U.S. governments.

Sticking To the Moral High Ground

Alan Dershowitz reminds me not that he's a world-class idiot, but that he knows exactly what he is doing in making his various disingenuous arguments on U.S. foreign policy. You know what, Alan? I like coming from a nation which has, although less frequently under the current President, often chosen to take the moral high ground, sometimes at its own detriment. You make it clear enough with your tortured advocacy for torture that there is no value of this nation you won't sacrifice in the name of your personal political causes.

Israel can and does make its case that its torture qua "moderate physical pressure" of Palestinians is necessary for its defense. If it believes that, and you believe that, fine. But in the torture debate you intentionally sidestep the political aspect - dare I say motive - for your argument. Instead of presenting an honest evaluation of the issues, your contrivances offer a fig leaf to those who don't much care about the externalities of torture. To the extent that the U.S. has engaged in torture (qua "abuse" and whatever we now call such acts of "interrogation" as waterboarding) in Iraq, authorized or not, there is clear evidence that the acts have severely diminished our status internationally and substantial evidence that they have set back our cause in the Middle East and Iraq. Is that what you wanted? Or is it that you didn't care, because your real goal is to undermine the ability of the U.S. and its citizens to condemn torture?

And now you play the other side of the coin. As a world-class hypocrite you are no doubt very capable in sniffing out even the slightest hypocrisy of others. But really:

When Israel targeted the two previous heads of Hamas, the British foreign secretary said: "targeted killings of this kind are unlawful and unjustified." The same views expressed at the United Nations and by several European heads of state. It was also expressed by various Human Rights organizations.

Now Great Britain is applauding the targeted killing of a terrorist who endangered its soldiers and citizens. What is the difference, except that Israel can do no right in the eyes of many in the international community. Surely there is no real difference between Zarqawi on the one hand and terrorist leaders from Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other hand.

But wait a minute.... you really don't see a difference? As I've previously stated, I don't believe you are a world-class idiot, which... well, sorry to say it, means that you're not telling the truth. And in presenting your distortion, I think you undermine your case.

You see, a case can actually be made for assassinating the active leaders of terrorist groups - particularly a hierarchichal terrorist group. Such assassinations have, in the past, thrown terrorst groups into disarray. This makes the case for the assassination of a Hamas leader in some ways stronger than the case for the assassination of somebody like al-Zarqawi, as Hamas is much more hierarchical (at least in its political branches) than Al Qaeda. Although we can hope it does, it isn't immediately apparent that al-Zarqawi's death will reduce violence in Iraq.

But there are counterpoints. There is a possibility that the U.S. could have launched an armed raid on al-Zarqawi's hideout, perhaps capturing him alive and taking him into custody. But apparently, in what would be a perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation, military commanders determined that it was not worth the risk to the lives of U.S. troops. What did U.S. troops do when they found al-Zarqawi alive after the bombing? They administered emergency medical care. This, Alan, was a military operation, not what you would call a "targeted assassination" - while even Bush admits his words were crude, in his parlance we wanted al-Zarqawi "Dead or Alive".

I recall reading a Ha'aretz article a few years ago about a commando raid on a Palestinian man's home. He answered the door in boxer shorts. They confirmed his name (first and last) and then shot him dead. What you would deem a "targeted killing". Ha'aretz pointed out that the raid was apparently intended to kill somebody who had the same first and last names, but a different middle name. Nobody questioned the fact that the man could have been taken into custody. Nobody claimed he was a high level operative or "head of Hamas". While Israel did exercise due care to avoid killing people other than this particular man, and deserves credit for that, it nonetheless remains the case that they could have just as easily taken him into custody where issues as to his identity could have been resolved, and where he could have been put on trial in a court of law.

An Israeli newspaper found cause to question that particular killing, Alan. Perhaps you are just as critical of Ha'aretz as you are with those in Europe or the United States who take issue with the policies behind that killing, but this fact remains: You know about this type of incident, you know that there is an enormous difference between the attack on al-Zarqawi's hide-out and Israel's policies of "targeted killing", and you are being intentionally misleading.

You mention the killing of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin by Israel, in what was a relatively clean missile strike, but you make no mention of the strike ordered by Ariel Sharon on the Hamas military leader Salah Shehada. That killing was quite comparable in many ways to what happened to al-Zarqawi - a one ton bomb dropped on his suspected hideout, as compared to the two five-hundred pound bombs dropped on al-Zarqawi's. But Shehada was in a densely occupied civilian neighborhood, and the bombing killed fourteen other people, including nine children between the ages of two months and nine years. I know you remember that one, Alan, because it had to stick in your craw when the George W. Bush White House expressed through Ari Fleischer, "this heavy-handed action does not contribute to peace."

Now before you go nuts telling me that in criticizing you and your impassioned defense of Israel, I am somehow condoning terrorism or attacking Israel, let me cut you off. I am doing nothing of the sort. The fact that you drag Israel into these discussions does not make it the fault of others that they cannot respond to you without also addressing your points of comparison. Israel's making tough choices in a tough situation - I can disagree with those choices, and even believe that some of them are counter-productive, while recognizing that my preferred alternatives may well be no more productive in terms of either ending the conflict or advancing peace. But you? Your bloated posterior is ensconsed in a leather chair in your air conditioned office at Harvard, where you devote your time to presenting disingenuous arguments based upon intentional misrepresentations of fact. Personally, I think nations are better served by having sympathetic critics who urge them to stick to the moral high ground, than to have sycophantic dissemblers pushing them down the low road.

No offense.

Free Trade Meets Immigration?

The Washington Post describes the peculiar state of U.S. immigration laws, and the hurdles they place in front of a German physician who wishes to work in the United States. We seem to make it easy to come to the U.S. to harvest vegetables, and are on the verge of creating a "guest worker" program presumably so we can expand that immigration largesse to nannies, gardeners, construction workers, and similar occupations. Many of these workers and their families will pay substantially less in taxes than they consume in government services. Our President supposedly believes in free trade, and favors this liberalized immigration policy, so why is he advocating for immigration reform only at the bottom of the labor market?

Flint Passes a Budget

I read in the news today that Flint has passed a budget - $305.5 million for the next fiscal year. Less than $600 per minute? That seems kind of low....

Are Elections Won? Or Are They Lost?

In today's era, or perhaps in any era, how often does a challenger to an incumbent truly winan election? Controlling for an unexpected skeleton dancing out of a closet, how often does the challenger truly persuade the electorate that "The incumbent is good, but you should elect me because I'm better?"

Isn't it actually the case that where an incumbent loses an election, and even more the case when there is a statewide or national movement toward one party over another, that the incumbent politician or party is perceived as having somehow proved himself unfit to govern? And it's not so much that the challenger is necessarily better, but that the challenger is the only other realistic option?

I'm not trying to indict democracy or gerrymandering. I'm just having a hard time thinking of a political campaign where an incumbent lost, let alone where a party lost control of Congress or a Parliament, despite being viewed as effective on election day. Isn't this why negative campaigning is so effective? Why it is now preferred to have a Karl Rove secretly open his bag of dirty tricks rather than actually debating the issues?

The Filthy Rich? Propagandists? The Ignorant?

Playing an "us" versus "them" game, Senator Jeff Sessions states,

The estate tax -- or, as many of us prefer to call it, the death tax -- is a tax imposed on the transfer of assets or property from a deceased person to his or her heirs.

But for some reason he fails to define just who he means by "us".

A Flint Minute....

Okay... perhaps I'm beating a dead horse (or popping bubble wrap), but....

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I didn't know that in "Chronicling the high cost of our legal system" Walter Olson had become a Canadian, I find his math to be interesting:

Federal Express drivers Edgar Rizkallah and Kamil Issa, both of Lebanese descent, say the nasty epithets from their manager went on for two years, which means the award works out to $15 million per epithet-year, $290,000 per slur-week, or $40,000 per imprecation-day.

Well, let's see... Michael Moore is being sued for $85 million over a ten second clip. That's $510 million per Flint minute, more than $30 billion per Flint hour, almost three quarters of a trillion dollars per Flint day, $268 trillion per Flint year.... All for the pain of having people think you're "from the same background as the people in Flint"?

Oh, I know.... It's different".

He's Going After Hillary?

Walter Olson is apparently so preoccupied with Hillary Clinton that the suit against Michael Moore somehow escaped his notice.

Online Debate

It's been said before, but I like the way this guy put it. Explaining why he chose not to participate in an online dissection of one of his columns, Charlie Brooker describes the mechanism of much online debate,

Stumble in, take umbrage with someone, trade a few blows, and within about two or three exchanges, the subject itself goes out the window. Suddenly you're simply arguing about arguing. Eventually, one side gets bored, comes to its senses, or dies, and the row fizzles out: just another needless belch in the swirling online guffstorm.

But not for long, because online quarrelling is also addictive, in precisely the same way Tetris is addictive. It appeals to the "lab rat" part of your brain; the annoying, irrepressible part that adores repetitive pointlessness and would gleefully make you pop bubblewrap till Doomsday if it ever got its way. An unfortunate few, hooked on the futile thrill of online debate, devote their lives to its cause. They roam the internet, actively seeking out viewpoints they disagree with, or squat on messageboards, whining, needling, sneering, over-analysing each new proclamation - joylessly fiddling, like unhappy gorillas doomed to pick lice from one another's fur for all eternity

Oooh. Lice picking.... Yummy!

"But This Is Different"

The bloggers of Pajamaline (f'rinstance; f'rinstance) seem to be giddy over the fact that a Gulf War vet and his wife have sued Michael Moore over a clip from NBC News that was used in Fahrenheit 911:

Damon is asking for up to $75 million because of "loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment, and personal humiliation."

In addition, his wife is suing for another $10 million because of the "mental distress and anguish suffered by her spouse."

Back in the days before he was going to sue anyone, Damon's objections were detailed in the Army Times.

In [the clip], Damon is seen sitting on a gurney just before going into surgery. The remains of his arms are swathed in heavy bandages, and he is describing phantom-limb sensation and the phantom crushing pain that doctors have relieved with a steady flow of anesthesia into each limb.

The original Oct. 31 interview with NBC Nightly News was about the anesthesia and the work being done at the hospital with other amputee soldiers. Damon and his anesthesiologists considered it a positive piece that showcased the hard work being done for wounded soldiers.

But, Damon notes, the 10-second clip in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is sandwiched into a segment of the movie that describes the supposed plight of hapless soldiers sent to Iraq, many of whom, Moore asserts, have joined the Army to escape poverty.

"For this guy to put me in a movie and say, 'Look at all these poor fellows,' it makes us look like we all came from the same background as the people in Flint, Michigan," Damon said.

Damon has appeared in two films denouncing Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11, but I guess people still think he's from Flint.

There seems to be no end of right-wing applause for the lawsuit, but I have yet to find even a single critical peep from the "tort reformers"... presumably because it's Michael Moore, which means "it's different". And as it's not a lawsuit against their corporate masters, so why would they care if he faces a lawsuit of dubious validity with an absurd demand for damages. But then, we haven't yet heard from Volokh's Dave Kopel. After all, he would be the first to tell us that just because you don't like the defendant, it doesn't mean that the plaintiff should be awarded millions of dollars. Right?

Update: Another Pajamaliner chimes in: "I have no idea if the case has any merit, but I do like the idea of Michael Moore being sued." How, um, conservative.

Your Next Promotion... Courtesy of Immigration

John Tierney is good enough to explain, using manicurists as his paradigm, how immigration leads to better jobs for English-speaking Americans:

Some Americans gave up their licenses, but the turnover wasn't much higher than it had been before the Vietnamese arrived. The chief effect of the competition was to discourage young Americans from entering the business, so over time the number of American manicurists dwindled.

"The Vietnamese didn't so much displace Americans as gradually replace them," Krynski says. "Some Americans stayed in the business in upscale salons, and others probably went into other occupations offering higher wages, like being a hairdresser."

Tierney himself prefers the upscale spas, comparing his experience getting a manicure from a Vietnamese immigrant who charged him $8, and a Beverly Hills manicurist who charges $150 for a house call.

Nguyen couldn't compete with Harris in ambience or conversation - I barely got her to utter her name. Harris spent half an hour working on my right hand, gently using compresses infused with tangerine and peppermint as well as a hazelnut and menthol scrub. Nguyen did my left hand in 10 minutes without explaining what she was doing.

(I understand in his next column he shares his experience test driving a Lincoln Navigator and a Toyota Yaris, and how surprised he is that the Navigator was more luxurious.)

A few days ago, Tierney suggested that we need immigrants to staff the assisted living centers and nursing homes of the future - "As the population ages, it’s going to get harder to find young people to do those jobs unless the Republicans in the House go along with the Senate’s plan to add legal immigrants". Not a peep, though, about how many people who would otherwise have become nursing home aides have upgraded their career plans to nurse, doctor, or administrator.

I'm not going to argue that workers in relatively low-skill, low-wage service jobs can't find alternatives, and perhaps can even take an extra semester or two at beauty school (or the equivalent) to become licensed to both do nails and cut hair. I also think Tierney's argument is a red herring, as the real risk to workers is not so much the loss of jobs or increased competition for jobs which must be performed by local workers, but the loss of jobs which can now be performed in other nations. When a worker who is supporting her family on a middle class income has her position eliminated, or when he is told that his wages are being slashed as part of his employer's reorganization, the possibility of "retraining" as a hairdresser or computer technician has limited appeal - they would become entry level workers competing with a pool of much younger, equally qualified job candidates.

These aren't issues that we can easily address, nor are they trends we can easily reverse. The more reactionary proposals, such as retreating from globalization or closing the borders to immigration, would likely do more harm than good. But to the extent that we can do something, I don't think it is particularly helpful to pretend that the well-documented divergence of wealth in this country does not result, at least in part, from the loss of job and income opportunity for ordinary workers. Or, for that matter, to pretend that there is not a problem because California manicurists seem to have done okay for themselves.

"Did I Mention That He Walks On Water?"

Robert Moffitt of the Heritage Foundation praises the wondrous Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts who single-handedly brought health insurance to the masses. (Next up for delivery, fish and loaves.) Okay, we get it... he's running for President.

Making Email Safe For Work

The Guardian tells a tale of email filter overkill:

Commercial lawyer Ray Kennedy, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, claims he sent three emails to Rochdale council complaining about his neighbour's [house extension] plans.

But the first two messages, which contained the word "erection", failed to reach the planning department because the software on the town hall's computer system deemed them offensive.

That reminds me of why, years back, I turned off grammar checking on Word because (among other problems) it kept declaring (whatever the context) that the word "broad" was potentially offensive.

As Snake Told Sideshow Bob

"Dude, use a pen." (Credit: volokh.com)