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Stanley Fish writes in the Times about, well, nothing much. 飞刀加速器-免费注册飞刀网游加速器【官方网站】:手机号码：（若收不到验证码请更换ie浏览器尝试或联系客服）

Some of the article is tongue-in-cheek of course, rather like the title of this post, but there’s a large problem underlying the entire enterprise. I thought I’d write about it in a general, broad brushed way, since a lot of the articles on the topic quickly dive into murky theory.

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Here's the problem. In contemporary America, Originalism is used as a means of “interpreting” certain important ideas and concepts in the Constitution. It’s associated with “conservative” thought (although there’s no reason why it couldn’t be “liberal”), and has a kind of common, rough-hewn sense to it. However, the application of Originalism can be dangerous and sometimes farcical.

For non-law, non-politics type readers, here's a super-imple sketch of law in America. America’s citizens created a Constitution. The Constitution sets the rules as to how the Government functions and creates “rights” for citizens. The Constitution can be modified by specific mechanisms. In a sense, the Constitution sets the “Basic Rules” for the country; the government and the laws created under the Constitution cannot violate those “Basic Rules.”

In principle it’s an excellent and flexible system, and most of the time it works pretty transparently. On one end of the scale, Americans still completely agree (thankfully) on what some of these rights “mean” in a practical, everyday sense. For example, the government cannot send soldiers to shoot you in the head, just because the people in power don’t like how you pray. In fact, many of these agreements are so obvious as to seem ludicrous to Americans; but it’s a case of a fish not being aware of the water it swims in. There are places where governments do just shoot people – it happens now. Americans enjoy a wonderful and amazing array of rights that the law enforces and defends; freedom to speak your mind, pray, gather in a community, own property, go to court if someone’s wronged you, worship (or not) as you see fit, not to be beaten by strangers, etc. Nearly all of these rights are found in the Constitution and its Amendments, and while we disagree on the fine points of some of them, they’re basically there, and there's little (or very marginal) controversy surrounding them.

On the other end of the scale, Americans are deeply divided over a few issues like abortion; some argue abortion has Constitutional protection as a basic right, others argue is has no protection and thus could be legislated against or outlawed. Since the Constitution sets up the “Basic Rules” which specific laws have to follow, on contentious issues, it suddenly becomes very important what certain phrases in the Constitution “actually mean.” Is abortion “actually” protected by the Constitution or not?

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Originalists (in this context) want to look at what the people who originally wrote (and voted on) the Constitution meant. They also want to look at how people living at the time would have generally understood what the Constitution “meant.” The underlying idea is that through Orignalism we’ll have a more precise understanding of what “cruel and unusual” means, and be in less danger of being “mislead” by language or concepts that have changed over time. Legal decisions would be more predictable, reasonable, and if something needs to be changed in the Constitution itself, we can just vote in a new amendment. Which sounds aaaaalmost reasonable. (Cue Stanley Fish with his pastries: “we’re just trying to understand something, not be political. . .”)

In no particular order, here are the problems with Originalism.

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Second, Originalism is intellectually dishonest. Even if you “start” with Originalism, there’s always a layer of interpretation that must occur because things change over time. Let’s say the idea of forcing people to take medication just was never considered, one way or another, when people were talking about “cruel and unusual” punishment in those days. So what do we do now, guess as to what people might have thought about it, 200 years ago? Or, lets say that something flat out didn’t exist 200 years ago? Anything invented in the past 200 years is in an “anything goes zone?” If you’re going to engage in interpretation anyway. . .

I think the best evidence "in" the Constitution itself is simply that if it was really meant to be an Originalist document, we’d either have to constantly amend the Constitution with tiny specific updates (because it wouldn’t apply to new things we think up) or pass an amendment that said “we’re going to interpret the Constitution through our normal societal standards at any given time.” And you know what? The Founders DIDN’T start constantly amending the Constitution to clarify its language.

Another way of looking at this is to apply an Originalist system and imagine the Founders trying to design it: “OK, lets make a Supreme Court. The Court will only decide based on the literal language of the Constitution and will not “interpret” it in any way. That way, if there’s an important case involving a brand new situation, a case that might affect thousands of people, the Court can simply say it can’t interpret the Constitution. Then, when enough people are outraged, we’ll muster the entire population and have them amend the Constitution so the situation is covered. We’ll just keep on doing that for every “new” court case! And, for extra fun, we won’t schedule any kind of regular procedure to periodically amend the Constitution.”

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There’s a more fundamental political issue though: So. Let’s go with Originalism. What if death by torture was completely normal 200 years ago? (Torture everyone!) Or, on the other hand, what if forcing someone to take psych meds, or locking someone up for more than a year was considered “cruel and unusual” 200 years ago? (Let everyone in Jail out now!) What if, 200 years ago, some people thought it was, and some people thought it wasn’t? What if someone felt strongly about it but thought the concept was so obvious they didn’t write it down? (We guess!) You see the problems. It really does not matter what people thought if the result (for us, now) would be absurd – and if the result is sensible and wise, surely we can reach it on our own. Now as far as “consensus” goes, the idea that we’re just going to look for what those long dead people thought as a whole, or thought something meant as a whole, let me tell you, regardless of what they thought, they made bad decisions. For example, “collectively” forbade women to vote and allowed slavery. The slavery argument isn’t just rhetorical by the way, it’s obvious immorality aside, it was a bad decision that crippled and nearly destroyed the country. There is no “golden age” of right decisions and clear language to return to, even assuming the Originalists didn’t make any mistakes in their interpretations of what they think someone meant.

So why the obsession with tracking down the nuances of a word used 200 years ago? Well, Fish in his article might have you believe that it adds to our understanding, and I’m sure it does somewhat. But what it really does is put an argumentative arrow in a Judge’s quiver. The argument, as you may have guessed, is “Dead White Guy (or guys) thought “X,” the end.”

Or even worse, “DWG wrote X, which everyone thinks meant X, and lord knows we’ve been going about acting like it meant X, but the jokes on us because it really meant Y! The end."

Seriously. I’m not kidding. That’s the only way you can use Originalism. “Well, on this contentious divided social issue, which some people think should go one way, and some people think should go another way, DWG thought X, the end.”

NOTE: this is not saying, “Well, on this contentious divided social issue, DWG thought X, which Agrees or Disagrees with this important comprehensive study about the issue itself, outlining its pros and cons, in light of our traditions and what we can expect in the future.” That would be an interesting historical footnote. It’s also Not saying, “Well, on this contentious divided social issue, there’s a long string of good (or bad ) decisions people have made, and these are the effects of those decisions, interestingly enough, DWG thought X, which began (or opposed) these decisions.” But none of these would actually be Originalism, just the proper use of historical context.

I’d put it to you that if an issue is in fact contentious, or litigated, or far reaching, or important, it ought to be decided in a rational way that considers as much information as possible and weighs the consequences of our options. Playing “gotcha” with definitions is abrogating our responsibility to ourselves and our future.

Just remember – “the more Originalism you need, the less relevant it is.”

Posted on February 07, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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There’s been some national coverage about the Cranston High School West (R.I.) prayer banner. Here is a link to the NY Times article. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/rhode-island-city-enraged-over-school-prayer-lawsuit.html?_r=1

The crux of the issue is that the High School has a fairly innocuous prayer, written by a child, on the wall of the school auditorium. A young woman, Jessica Ahlquist, ended up suing to have the prayer removed from the wall. A judge found in her favor. Appeals may follow.

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It’s one of those fundamental American questions. How does a country built on the diverse strengths of its citizens (and their plurality of religious beliefs and ideas) allocate the public expression of those beliefs?

Privately, we enjoy the freedom of religion, but the issue becomes thorny when public monies are concerned. Current rhetoric in America focuses on “tax dollars” – who wants their tax dollars spend on something wasteful and/or that they don’t believe in? This kind of rhetoric is a useful proxy, but concept we should focus on is more fundamental than that.

Throughout history, countries with a plurality of religions have suffered from, or been destroyed by, religiously motivated violence. This is not to say that religion is inherently violent, but that what actually distinguishes one religion from another is a difference in the way one worships or what one believes in. Sometimes small “technical” differences are embraced by a culture, and thus while the religious differences “seem small” they are animated by two very different types of peoples with starkly different philosophies, e.g., intra-Protestant violence, intra-Catholic violence.

America was founded as a haven from religious violence (though we’ve had our share of it ourselves), and, as a consequence, we set ourselves up as a country that allowed for individual religious expression, but would have no official state sponsored religion that could marginalize other religions and beliefs.

Whenever I see a controversy like this it makes me wonder about education in America. Specifically something called “civics.” The concept is pretty simple:

1) If there is a public school which uses public money (drawn from everyone) no religious expression should be present on the part of the school.

2) If your school is private – go for whatever expressions of belief you want.

Granted, there are shades of gray in there, which is what we have courts for (if discussion and reasonable compromise fails). But what really bothers me is how many people just don’t “get” that basic concept.

The irony of this specific situation is that with some rewording, the basic concepts of the “prayer” would make an excellent school creed, or statement of values:

SCHOOL PRAYER

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER,

GRANT US EACH DAY THE DESIRE TO DO OUR BEST,

TO GROW MENTALLY AND MORALLY AS WELL AS PHYSICALLY,

TO BE KIND AND HELPFUL TO OUR CLASSMATES AND TEACHERS,

TO BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES AS WELL AS WITH OTHERS,

HELP US TO BE GOOD SPORTS AND SMILE WHEN WE

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TEACH US THE VALUE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP,

HELP US ALWAYS TO CONDUCT OURSELVES SO AS TO

BRING CREDIT TO CRANSTON HIGH SCHOOL WEST.

AMEN

Kudos to the kid who wrote it. Kudos also to the young woman who asked that it not be placed on the wall of a publicly funded school. I’m not so pleased with the school board who didn’t think to modify it to be a statement of values that might be embraced by anyone, and instead decided to force litigation over the issue – an issue that they’re clearly in the wrong on.

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On a much broader note, as an attorney, I’m kind of struck (daily) at how much litigation could be avoided if people learned to compromise. Granted, much litigation actually is avoided because of reasonable compromise, but I’m still somewhat taken aback by the posturing.

Thoughts for another day.

Posted on January 27, 2012 | mxvpm加速中心网站 | Comments (0)

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MLK day and neither the NY Times nor the Boston Globe have anything remotely concerning MLK in the headlines of their web pages. Although the Globe has a very prominent link to an article on Golden Globe fashion issues. Clearly - part of the problem.

Posted on January 16, 2012 | mxvpm加速中心网站 | Comments (0)

Why I Love Robert Heinlein

Click on the image for a full size version.

Heinlein

Posted on January 04, 2012 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ships in the Night

Well, that was a busy stretch (and one not quite done). Scopwife and I continue to settle into NYC, a process that is, I think, almost complete.

Since my last entry, I’ve finished setting up the new law firm, had a couple of visitors to NYC, traveled to Miami and back for a too-short trip, saw extended relatives, cultivated facial hair, vetted clients, did much legal research, got sick (not related to any of the forgoing), got well, and am looking forward to seeing the Firecracker, whom I have not seen in, gosh, I don’t know when. A decade, I expect. If I have seen her more recently, I’m sure it was in the context of a hello-as-Scoplaw-zips-through-on-the-way-to-somewhere. Memory memory.

Riposte came up to visit us recently. We walked about the city, had brunch, went to the Neue Gallery (http://www.neuegalerie.org/), but alas, did not have time for lunch at Café Fledermaus. In keeping with our impromptu Austrian/Germanic theme, we also took in Gounod's "Faust" at the Met; specifically the Des McAnuff's “Faust-as-atomic-scientist” production. It was a good effort, but the opera ultimately was undercut by its plot/rendering. There’s not a lot of contemporary resonance to be found in trying to evoke the horrors of pre-marital sex/pregnancy, and the more modern casting of Faust as an atomic scientist prevents the viewer from thinking of this as a period piece (and thus importing the now desiccated mores of an earlier age). What could have been brilliant was actually something of a lose/lose situation.

Just last night (my first night not coughing/dripping in awhile) we went back to see Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment,” which was a much better production, despite the horrendous costuming of the leads and the at-best marionette-like presence of Lawrence Brownlee. Brownlee was actually quite good when he didn’t have to pay attention to what was happening on stage. Unfortunately, an opera is more than 30 seconds worth of notes, as much as a poem is more than one great image. But even with such, it’s worth seeing.

Well.

I’m off to do another round of NYC food shopping. Prices here are, as is so much else about the city, needlessly exaggerated. When I got to Miami, I met up with some other people who had also just arrived. We decided to get quick sandwiches for dinner – Dear God! Did you know it’s possible to make a tuna salad sandwich for less than $10! After living a mere three months in the city, such a notion shocks me to the core.

While it was something of a working trip, I didn’t get to see The Mayor, who had taken his family north on the exact days I was to be in Miami. Or so he claims. . . hmmm.

Also, while I was in Miami, I took the motorcycle out. Someone kept honking to me (I think) on US1. Hello! I had/have absolutely no idea who you are - that was a placating wave. Feel free to say hello in a medium that carries more identity that repeatedly honking from a backlit car across a busy intersection.

Apparently I now give off “attorney vibe.” I was correctly identified as such despite my jeans and tshirt ensemble when I visited a local public law library. Actually two people pegged me; the librarian and another attorney, who was suited up. The attorney was quite funny; he asked a librarian something and finished with “as long as you’re not busy helping this other attorney.” When I raised an eyebrow at him, he waved at my books and notes on the table and said, “Obviously you’re not a student,” as if that was the only other choice. In a funny way though, he was right. I was hunting through vaguely related issues to make sure I hadn’t missed something obvious and/or an unfavorable interpretation of a strongly analogous statute. I’m not sure how to explain it visually, but what I was doing really couldn’t have been anything else. Or perhaps it was that I didn’t attempt to conceal my notes? Anyway, I found it very amusing. So I asked him what he was working on (generally) as we were the only two left in the library. His response – “I have a trial in front of Judge X in two weeks.” I made the same non committal grunt everyone seems to make when they hear that name. His response – “Sigh. Exactly.” Which explains the basic law outline that he was compiling.

Posted on December 30, 2011 in Personal Ramblings | Permalink | mxvpm官网

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

I apologize to old friends and the idly curious for not posting in quite awhile.

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I left the Public Defender's office in Miami in August of 2011. I’d like to write a bit about my time there and the impression it left on me.

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I left with a tremendous amount of practical litigation experience; literally thousands of depositions, thousands of clients, hundreds of motions, and about 50 actual trials of one form or another. Those trial cases ran the spectrum - misdemeanors to murder. And, as luck or fate or the grace of my trial partners would have it, the vast majority of those trials resulted in very good outcomes. (In many ways my trial experiences were a product of Miami’s particular legal culture during the time I was there – had I gone elsewhere, been assigned different court rooms, or had been opposing different state attorneys, I very much doubt I’d have tried as many cases, or enjoyed the same results.)

I think the most valuable part of the experience came from working with my co-workers and training attorneys; I learned so much from them (not just on matters legal) that it's difficult to quantify; even though I'm no longer there, I am still learning as I muse on the experiences I’ve had. I formed some very deep friendships, and, as a whole, my colleagues continue to impress me with their skill and dedication.

Most importantly, at the close of my time there, I left with the feeling that it had been worthwhile, that I had really helped people – not everyone, surely, but there were truly affirming moments. Going to Miami was one of the most significant and rewarding decisions I’ve made.

These good experiences came with a cost however. I’ll try to explain, as this cost is the main reason why I left the office; it also explains why I stopped blogging, and is, on its own, a very real societal concern.

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It’s true; the hours are long (50-60 hrs a week.) The pay is poor (low to mid 40s). I managed to stay healthy enough despite the desk job, although it took conscious effort. The clients are occasionally difficult and/or dangerous, but this is a tiny percentage of the total number of clients. While it’s a common assumption is that representing the actual clients is the worst part of the job, it’s really not. It’s been explained elsewhere, but, in a nutshell I’m sure I’ve represented some very bad people who did monstrous things; I’m also sure I represented some completely innocent people who were unjustly accused. Either way, the only person (possessing relative power) in the legal system that can help the client is the defense attorney. Guilty or Innocent, no one else in the system is there, by definition, to help them – that’s solely the job of the defense attorney. Anyone who is accused of a crime certainly deserves someone in their corner, giving them advice and rigorously testing the accusations to see if they’re sound or not. So, whatever moral qualms you have about individual clients quickly becomes water under the bridge. Even if you don’t like them personally, you can provide a crucial constitutional service with skill and respectful professionalism.

Despite the hours and the pay, it could have been a sustainable job – for it’s a job rich with satisfaction. I wasn’t able to keep at it, however, almost solely because of the sheer number of clients and the stress comes from representing so many of them, so quickly. Let me try to explain that.

When an individual client is assigned to you, there are a number of things you must do to competently represent them. You have to meet with the client, get their story, find out what they think about the case against them, do investigation, get discovery, go back to the client, go over the investigation and discovery with them to see if it makes sense or if there’s something missing, do legal research, set and take depositions, interview and prepare your own witnesses, review all this with the client, write and file applicable motions, negotiate with the state attorneys assigned to the case, discuss with (often educate) your client on the different ways he can resolve his case by in part highlighting the pros and cons of each. To fairly assess the relative worth of any plea bargain, your client must understand what a trial *would* be like in the case. Then, should your client decide to go to trial, there’s the actual trial prep, followed by the trial itself. In short, it’s a lot of work depending on how you approach it. (I used to have my clients call me after every deposition so I could tell them (briefly) what the witness said, and thus make sure we caught any discrepancies in the testimony.) Regardless of the severity of the charges, the same basic form of client representation remains; however, if your client is facing a situation where the plea offer is 10 years, verses life imprisonment if he loses at trial, sometimes you turn over stones twice, instead of once. Then you turn them over again. Just to be sure.

So the question becomes, once we know what’s entailed in fairly and adequately representing one human being accused of a crime, how many clients should a defense attorney have?

There must be an upper “number” of cases, even acknowledging for the differing degrees of complexity and severity in cases. In my experience, given the resources of the office I worked in, if I had a 40 hour work week and only 5 randomly selected criminal cases open at any given time, I wouldn’t have had enough to do. If I had 20-30 cases, I’d probably have been usefully busy, and could still do a good job.

However, what I actually had was somewhere between 60-90 2^nd degree felony clients at any given time. (As a “C” attorney I used to have anywhere from 70-145 3^rd degree felony clients). Those are insane numbers, and I can’t stress that enough.

Why are they insane numbers?

One basic reason; a significant number of clients are incarcerated. While the client sits in jail (and believe me, I had “Innocent” clients kept in jail pending the resolution of their cases) they can’t work – apartments and jobs are lost, their relationships crumble, their cars are repossessed, opportunities are missed, and with every day there’s a stronger chance that their general reputation and standing in their community becomes more and more damaged, regardless of the outcome of their case. Beyond this, the jails are a dirty and dangerous place to find yourself in. Not only is there the threat of physical violence from your fellow inmates, the medical and psychological care is, in my opinion, substandard. (For example, the jails have limited kinds of medicine available to treat mental health problems – if you need specific care and medication, you might only be able to get something approximate, and thus, not as effective.) This puts a lot of pressure on the attorney to get those cases developed and ready for resolution/trial as quickly as possible. I’d routinely have about 30 people in jail at any one given time.

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In a nutshell (there’s a much more detailed and nuanced analysis that can be done, involving speedy trial rules and so forth, but the following should suffice for conversational purposes), because courts can only try one case at a time, there’s always a backlog of cases awaiting trial. And, should the state attorneys and the PDs (who handles the bulk of criminal cases in most courtrooms) actually be in trial all the time (trial after trial after trial for a month), new cases would not be developed (depositions taken, etc) and that alone would create a backlog. This creates incentives to plea cases out, which might benefit defendants who were inclined to plea all along, but it hurts clients who need to try their cases. One could say that this kind of incentive most benefits factually guilty individuals with poor trial cases, whereas a criminal justice system should (I think everyone would agree) most benefit individuals who are on the “innocent” side of the spectrum. Well, the big picture is for another blog post, another day. Suffice to say though, that the large numbers of defendants bogs down the system in a dangerous way.

There was a lot of litigation about this in FL and elsewhere. The upshot of it all, when I left, was that the PDs in FL still could not limit their caseloads, and were being forced by the courts to accept clients. Numbers fluctuated somewhat as different alternatives were tried to reduce caseloads and release clients prior to the resolution of their cases. Even when the numbers were at their lowest, they were still far too high for effective representation.

So what did this mean, practically, in terms of how it played out day by day on the job?

Well, sometime around the beginning of my blogging silence, I was promoted from a "C" attorney to a "B" attorney - meaning that as a “B,” I largely handled second degree felonies. The majority of my new cases were drug trafficking, certain kinds of sex crimes, and violent acts that didn't actually leave someone dead. I also handled certain “sticky” “C” cases involving peculiar circumstances or complex evidentiary issues. I pretty much kept 7am-7pm M-F hours, usually eating at my desk, with occasional weekend work. I wasn’t robotically effective during those hours (no human is) but I certainly didn’t spend afternoons goofing off. On days when I knew I couldn’t work any more, I’d leave at 5pm. That didn’t happen all that often.

Of course, these hours changed when I was actually in trial. The basic rule was, if I wasn't asleep, I was working on something case-related. Felony trials usually last from 2 to 5 days. Trials become chunks of time I’d exclusively focus on one client (excepting a medical emergency or something). They also, by definition, become chunks of time I wasn’t working on other cases, some of would come up the next week, and some the week after that, and so on. In my experience something always happened while I was in trial; I’d get a new client (who is frantically calling you from jail), people call on cases, new discovery would come in, the state would file motions on existing cases, so on, so forth. The only option is to forge on as quickly as you can.

Different people deal with the high turnover and caseload in different ways. Some of it is pretty disturbing – you can actually see certain attorneys putting on the weight, getting more and more upset, getting less and less sleep, drinking more heavily. Other attorneys just “check out.” Many leave. Out of the 22 attorneys who were hired at the same time as I was, only 7 remained when I left. (And this is in an awful job market). Some actually seem to find a balance and keep at it.

Of course, it must be said that not all burdens are equal. There are courtrooms where fewer clients are incarcerated, waiting for trial. There are courtrooms where the state attorney is reasonable. There are courtrooms where the judge takes an active role. And then there are courtrooms where these things are not often or routinely the case. In my various postings, I have been lucky enough to have always had good judges I could work with. Sometimes I had good state attorneys (including a few truly excellent, compassionate state attorneys.) I’m not writing any of this to point fingers. I do want to suggest that, from a defense perspective, there are “harder” and “easier” courtrooms, depending on the individuals who create the courtroom culture. And, of course, defense attorneys, depending on their skills and personalities, do better in some courtrooms than in others. I believe I had a typical experience – while I had my “favorite” configuration of personalities to work with, I can honestly say that none of my postings were truly bad. I was always placed in courtrooms where I had a fighting chance. Even the courtroom where I ended up stupidly antagonizing the judge (my fault entirely) turned out with time to be an excellent one to practice in.

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I’m still thinking this over. I think the constant client turn over just finally got to me. When I left, I still had gas in the tank, but I wasn’t as quite sharp as I used to be. I had ”plateaued” to a certain extent; and I didn’t see the caseload changing enough that I’d have the mental and emotional space to creatively engage with the law. I had moments where I pushed back at this, but the general trend was ongoing.

I can say that I successfully studied for and took the NY bar. (I passed and have been sworn into NY.) I moved to a new apartment and renovated it. And, most importantly, I got married (HA! - More on all that in a bit.) On the negative side of the ledger, I did almost nothing at all with poetry (teaching, reading, writing, publishing) for a couple years. I shrunk my circle of close friends (and family) to a mere handful, and sometimes weeks would pass without my calling them – this spelled the end of one romantic relationship. I teetered on the edge of physical sloth (not helped by a bum knee, which, after a year and a half, has finally stopped clicking.) I certainly crossed the line of mental sloth/exhaustion. I wasn’t going out as much or exploring as much.

I don’t think the average person looking at me might have really noticed anything amis. Who knows? I just felt like I was in a tunnel that I could get through, at the cost of being squeezed and not being able to look around. That’s not exactly the right way to express it though. After a while, you realize that the tunnel goes on pretty much indefinitely.

That kind of constant pressure, high turn-over, trial-trial-trial environment does odd things to perspective and memory. Usually, we have enough “space” in our mental and emotional lives to consider, turn things over, muse. I went through a stage where the job ate up most of those resources. Then, when I met my future wife, I went through a stage where I wasn’t reflecting on the job all that much, even though it demanded much of my daily thought. It’s not really an issue of being “too busy to think,” but it is an issue of being “too busy to emotionally process” things. I’ll try to illustrate it with something I found disturbing. Toward the end of my time in the office, I was physically attacked by a client. It was the only time it had happened to me (well, where I had been touched); it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, and I wasn’t injured. So I did my usual thing of putting it aside and focusing on the next trial. Someone bluntly asked me about it, three weeks later, and I literally had no idea what they were talking about. Of course, I remembered soon enough, but it was disturbing. I wasn’t psychologically suppressing the event, but I was so damn busy it just got folded into “stuff that happened last month” in my brain and didn’t really incorporate it into my emotional and mental architecture. Maybe it was because the incident wasn’t that big of a deal – but at the same time, even if I didn’t really feel that it was emotionally that important, it was a significant event, or should have been one, had I not glossed it over.

I took it as a bad sign, one of many.

So I got out.

Some part of me regrets leaving – I miss the hectic challenge of it all, and, despite the pressure (now mentally minimized that I’m clear of it) I miss the kind of comfort I found in the predictability of the routine. It’s nice to have the answers to all the little things that must be done.

On the other hand, I’m glad to be away from it all. I certainly wouldn’t have had the time or inclination to write this had I still been there.

***

In August of 2011, I had the immense good fortune to be married to a lovely woman. We compliment each other frighteningly well (as is often commented upon by friends and acquaintances) and I am sweetly, sickly, sometimes revoltingly happy about it all. She is, in fact, the woman who I stopped in DC to see in my last blog entry. How odd is that? (While I have further thoughts on this, I am running out of steam, and should end this post soon.)

As mentioned above, since the last blog post I moved apartments several times, took the NY bar, and have relocated to NYC. We visit Miami often; my wife’s extended family lives there, and we both have friends and ongoing business concerns there.

I sold two motorcycles and bought another which became my daily commuter. I’d have tried to commute on bike, as I had when I was living closer, but my eventual commute was 22 miles round trip. I left the motorcycle in Miami, and get around NYC by bicycle.

NYC, as many of you know, is not my first choice for city living. But I’ve lived here before, and I appreciate what it *is* good for – overall it’s a wonderful change from Miami.

I’ll leave you with a picture of myself and Scopwife in our new digs:

Regency 001

(painting by Susan Siegal)

Posted on December 13, 2011 in Criminal Defense, mxvpm官网, PD Generally, Personal Ramblings, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Sheesh. That was an oddly intense week. After the funeral, I found out that CT was looking at snow with accumulation, which just isn't something that mixes well with motorcycles.

So I left asap, motoring south. I got as far as the NJ turnpike before the torrential rains hit. After that it was pretty much a disaster. The visor fogged no matter what I did, the horn circuit got wet and kept randomly going off (I have an air horn - loud enough to cause alarm), and all my "waterproof" gear started failing, one piece after another. Except for the gortex boots - which filled with water and would not drain. I can't recall more miserable travel ever. In any medium. I had to crush the horn circuit relay (I have a replacement) and use tin foil to cover part of the radiator (the engine was actually too cool with the wind and rain!)

I had planned on meeting a female friend for a date in DC. Yep. An actual date. But she was left sitting in her swank dress and shoes while I crept southbound, warming my hands as best I could. When I finally arrived in DC, 4 hours late, and teeth chattering with cold, she took pity on me and let me use her dryer. (I sat on the curb and emptied the water from my boots before knocking on her door.) Probably qualifies as the worst date I've ever had, casual or otherwise.

I hung out with The James Bond Watch (and saw his totally awesome new digs and new office space in the DC federal courthouse). His roommates are great. I also had brunch with the mystery lady and some friends which went much better due to a lack of dripping and shivering. She and I then went to a Man Ray exhibit which was totally impressive. Some people are easy to moniker, some are not. She's not. So she's just going to be the mystery lady for a bit while I consider this. I mean we talked about critical race theory, poetry, made fun of impressionism, and hold similar opinions on Fishbone and the Tarot. Quasi Freakish parallels abounded.

I left DC on Monday and headed south. The ride got increasingly better as I went. Sherry sealed up beautifully and her gas mileage improved along with her power. Low 40s while cruising at 70? Gotta love it. I spent the final 18 hours in one extended stretch of just-go. So I feel that while I'm slowing a bit with age, I can still largely bring it in the endurance category. 1000 miles in less than 24 hours. That's not so bad.

I also discovered that while I like to think I'm tolerant, there are some things that I have no respect for. All of these things managed to manifest themselves in a gas station in southern GA. A truly odd moment.

And now, back to the grind.

Posted on October 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Random Beauty and Death

Last night, I hung out with H and Otto while they were rehearsing some new songs. Then I got a tour of Icebox's new house - she bought and is fixing up a lovely old farmish house on the edge of town; it'd be a good place for her cats, except for the coyotes. Then we all went to a local tavern where I randomly ran into Housejacked, who I used to live with. It was a fun reunion - he and his family are doing well.

However in the midst of all this, an old friend from HS apparently was succumbing to Hodgkins (?), and died sometime last night or this morning. I thought she was in remission - she did a lot of high profile cancer survivor work. Details are still coming in. Oddly enough, she was randomly mentioned on both evenings.

Today is the wake for my great-aunt, who died on Wed. morning.

All so very bizarre. Sigh.

Posted on October 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking Scruffy While Mountain Biking at Valley Falls

Posted on October 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Turning

Well, everything is changed about. I had planned to take a vacation in Miami - maybe chill out, do some small projects, hang out with some local folks whom I never see (for no good reason).

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I took the motorcycle (1500miles in under 48hours). I broke the trip visiting Riposte and her Grandfather in SC, which was lovely as I'd not seen her in 2 years. Before that was also a couple of years. And before that was 2 years. I hope this does not become more of a pattern than it is. It was so good to see her again - she amazingly looks exactly the same as she did when I first met her, way back in the Athens days. And she still has that razor sharp mind. I love my friends in no small part because I walk away from them with questions and ideas I didn't have before I saw them. In this particular case I'll be looking at some theological writings.

The trip itself was great but so fucking cold. I was fine until I hit the outskirts of Baltimore when night was falling. After that it was a series of short hops where I'd stop to warm up (but not to get too sweaty-warm, which would make you colder as the sweat chills) before doing the next bit. I think the gear for the trip back will be stepped up a bit to be more windproof. Apart from the cold I had no physical problems at all. I think much of that is the new seat/backrest that I made after the last long trip on Bess left me cramped and achy. I didn't put floorboards on Sherry but the stock pegs did very well.

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Also, after dinner some of the old Rocky Horror Picture Show crew showed up - it was great to see them again. One in particular is a soft spoken intellectual individual who is pretty politcally engaged while being unplugged from bullshit local culture. The only thing that required a little extra conversational grace on my part was that she had gotten a sex change and changed her name as well. I kept wanting to refer to her by her old male name, which is a name I rather liked anyway. She taught me a new word and we had a good conversation featuring the media, law, the shear amount of dead people any one of us knows, and guitar fingering styles. I think the best line of the night was, "I don't care how straight you are - you're always going to be somebody's freak."

As usual, there are too many people to see, too many things to do. The central reason why I'm here is a sad one - I have no idea how it's going to go, or how much time I should spend with the great aunt. She's obviously very tired and may want privacy. So I figure she'll be my first priority and then I'll try to fill my days otherwise. Should be easy to do. Probably won't be blogging much about that situation though.

Right now the plan is to head south again on Friday, which should bring me back to Miami in time for court on Monday.

Posted on October 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Some months you just feel like you're spoiling for a fight.

Anyway, to flesh out my facebook updates with the blog, on the same day as my last post, I did indeed go to one of the jails. It was a pretty awesome day for a ride, and the Dolphin expressway was relatively clear. Shining Black Bess and I were in good form, and I had one of those rides where you're just leisurely cruising past traffic which is pretty free of assholes. I saw my guys at the jail (took about 3 hours) and left. When I got on Bess, I noticed the battery was really low - she wouldn't crank.

After the assistance of a nice woman who was at the jail to visit her son, I jumped Bess and my fears were confirmed - she wasn't charging the battery when I revved the engine. So I popped the regulator on and off and still, no charge. Which meant that my stator was probably fried.

On a motorcycle the stator is kind of like an alternator. It's a magnet-y and wire thing that produces electrical power when the engine is running. That power keeps the lights on and recharges the battery. (It's a constant output device so you need a regulator to either suck up power, or bleed the extra off as heat.) When the stator goes, the bike sucks the power it needs out of the battery. Which means you can run the bike for just so long off the battery, then if it dies, there's no restarting it. (And of course AAA won't service motorcycles -not even a jump start- unless you are on their extortion plan. Fucking bourgeois.)

So I dial up the idle (to make sure the bike does not stall out) and start going hell for leather home. Revving the bike could only have helped if the stator was putting out even minimal juice but the stator was completely fried and I got nothing out of it. Night was falling, and so was my battery gauge. 11. 10.5 9. Eventually it got down to 4 volts before bike stalled out. Thankfully, I only had to push it about a mile through a moderately bad neighborhood. Sweaty endeavor. It was a valiant final effort by Bess.

Fortune favors the prepared though, and as I mentioned on the blog, I had picked up a used Vulcan on craig's list for $100 and lunch for the towing guy. I had been doing a DUI/rat/rattlecan restoration on her in preparation for making her my local day to day ride and saving some miles on Bess.

So, with the new bike (named Scheherazade) sitting in the garage, I had a choice to make. Do I try to repair Bess or shift some of Bess's things over to Sherry? I chose the latter, given that I'd have to do a complete engine pull on Bess to get at the stator to replace it. So Bess is now partially dis-assembled, and her best bits are now part of Sherry.

However, misfortune struck again, in the form of a failing mechanical seal on Sherry. Basically, the mechanical seal keeps the oil and coolant separated in the engine. It's a much easier fix than a stator but still a 3 hour job. So I fixed the seal. Then it broke. So I fixed it again, but not fully. Ultimately this means I'll be waiting another week for the parts to come in to properly replace everything in that little corner of ugh on the bike.

Sherry's test runs remain pretty awesome though. She's got a slight stumble above 60mph. I think it's an air leak in the carbs or a jetting issue. Either way it'll be easy to track down and fix when I can run her.

Meantime, it's bicycle or nothing. Which isn't so bad really, as it will keep me off the roadways on Labor Day - never a bad thing.

So, that's it for the news. Felonies continues apace. Miami is still boringly venal - the few interesting people seem to hold me at arms length, while the many shallow definitely do. My patience/impatience cycle with this town and the bullshit part of my job is oscillating about as frequently, but the impatience is staying longer. But so it goes, so it goes. I read, I write, I play with El Gato Perfecto, I try to serve my clients (all 100+ of them) as best I can.

I think what I need to do is push back a bit at work. Free up some time, start making some progress in areas I've been neglecting. Hmm. I think I'm doing good work. I've surely been doing it at a breakneck pace. Perhaps this is skewing me, making me more fundamentally impatient, less satisfied. I don't really know.

Anyway, here's part of Sherry's open heart surgery.

Posted on September 03, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

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However, my replacement attorney managed, on her first day, to close down a case to a fantastic deal - a case that had given me months of head-aches. So I'm *very* pleased.

My new trial partners are awesome. In internet parlance, they may even be "teh awesomst."

What else? I met some of the new hires for the office. On the whole they seem pretty cool - and a couple were flat out impressive, but not in a gunslinger way. I'm so tired of gunslingers. Although some people think I'm one - so go figure.

I became part of the kitten rescue project at work - we carried about a little kitten until people fought over her. Probably one of the best lunch hours I've had, and a great way to relax. I wish I could bring El Gato Perfecto into work with me. It would make the hours so much easier.

I also met some very nice yoga people at a fundraiser and got a back massage. Oh my god, I can't tell you how nice that was. It felt like someone was fraying apart a rope inside my back. I think I put a lot of my stress there. One's thinking of teaching a men's yoga class. I'm curious about that. I do some basic stretching poses, but I'm a very short muscle fiber kind of guy. Oddly enough, I never seem to pull anything (beyond the occasional leg tweak when cycling over 50 miles). I am feeling a bit more creakly lately though. Eh.

I wound up at the same sushi place with the same people at 2am for two weekends running. Odds are low.

The other big "news" is that I finally got the new motorcycle running. She's very very quick. Like slide off the seat quick. She's an 86 Vulcan also, but, rather than try to recreate the stock bike, I used her partially dis-assembled status to do a few things to increase power. Basically I put on different air filters, modified the carbs, and changed some of the exhaust features while discarding unneeded bits. This lightened the bike by about 30 pounds as well. I don't have any numbers yet, but the idea is to trade some MPG for power. I certainly got the power end of things, and she's much lower, more stable, and quicker than Bess. I'm not sure about the top end though. That's untested and will be for awhile.

What's phenomenally disappointing is that she's leaking gas from the carbs again. So I need to redo what I've done before and hope it works this time. I don't mind putting in the time, but I always prefer to keep going onto new projects than redoing something over and over and over. Sigh.

But it was a fun test ride.

OK, the weather, unlike yesterday is beautiful, with towering white clouds and much sunlight. So I'm off to the jails. Such is the glory of a C felony attorney.

Posted on August 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Could be a good year for me. . .

Posted on August 07, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A small break

I took two days off because I sorely needed a break. Which is good, because there has been much wackiness associated with work.

Since then it's been interesting. I went to a fund raising dance party. I also went to a small show (friend of a friend) and met one of the cocaine cowboys (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxTiXfuJ40) but not in my professional capacity.

And this morning I slept in. I haven't done that in awhile.

Posted on August 07, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Relic Reliquary - A randomly sent link.

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Yeah, I was an alternative music college DJ - how cliche. Never fined by the FCC though (a fucking Miracle, I assure you - though 'sword and I probably put some gray hairs on poor Skip's head - he was our general manager.) I think the most fun I had in the booth was drinking with mxvpm加速中心网站.

I'm so glad to hear them again. For whatever reason, the Relics were a band whose shows I always seemed to end up at, back in my bar-wandering days. Also mxvpm官网 - they were always opening for everyone it seemed.

Posted on August 02, 2009 | Permalink | mxvpm官网