Cancer or Heart Disease. Your Choice.

Apparently that's about it, now.

I pray I might die in a manner more fit for a warrior; on the highway, or by blade or gun.  Yet such things are for a higher power than me to decide.  Whatever comes, I shall abide; and as Lancelot said, boldly, whatever God sends shall be welcome.


The classic way to win a Presidential election is to convince a majority of voters that you represent the vision they want to see for their country.  There's a secondary way, though, if that doesn't work:  buy off key segments in key states.

Since the normal way is out this year, we're left with route two.

Well, once you can't win their hearts, you have to bribe them.  Maybe there's enough voters left who can be bought.  That's the only road, now.  You only get away with this once:

They know you, now.

Frontiers and Privileges

Since T99 is talking about legal privileges today, I thought I would share a tidbit from some further historical research on Medieval Spain.

Apparently the greatest scholar of such history in the English-speaking world was Dr. Angus MacKay (pronounced, for the non-Scots among you, so that "Kay" rhymes with "sigh"). Born in Lima, Peru, he grew up with the Spanish language and developed a love of history.

Dr. MacKay demonstrated, among other things, that during the period when Spain was reconquering land from the Islamic states, there was a persistent population problem. Land needs to be worked, and cities need to be defended. Most of the Muslims would leave an area that became Christian -- although about one in three people in these reconquered areas continued to be Muslim -- so it was necessary to get people down there to work the land and hold the towns.

This led the kingdoms of Spain to offer legal incentives to anyone who would move to one of the frontier towns. If you could fight, you were due more; and if you could provide your own arms, still more. If you could fight, provide your own arms and a horse, you were elevated regardless of the circumstances of your birth to the status of a caballero -- that is, a knight -- although your low birth was socially recognized. However, as one of the privileges of this status was exemption from taxation, if you won much plunder by the strength of your arm, or simply could maintain the status for a few generations or ordinary income, your sons would rise to the status of hidalgo (literally 'son of something,' i.e., a child whose ancestors had amounted to something).

Additional tax incentives were offered, sometimes liberating everyone who came to a town from classes of ordinary taxes. Sometimes it freed those who participated in raids from paying back any plunder to the crown. But the most interesting one, to me, was this one promise made by King Alfonso VII to the lords and settlers of Oreja:
If someone should flee to Oreja with a woman, who is not his relation, is not married, and has not been taken by force or ravished, and he wishes to be one of the settlers, then he is to go there safely, and the lord of Oreja need not fear to accept him, and neither he nor the man who has seduced her has to answer to any of the woman's relatives.
That's an incredible waiver from the usual rules of marriage at the time.  It's also interesting that it requires only her consent, but allows the consent of her family to be defied entirely.

And yet this romantic view is not out of place in the middle ages.  It is a rule that comes, as we have seen, at the same time as the courtly love poetry of the troubadours was wildly popular among the kings of southern France, Spain, and England.  It was also the time of the idea put forward by the Church that the love of husband and wife was a reflection of the love of souls for God.

It was available to those brave enough to cast aside everything for their love, except the hope that their risk and labor might provide better than what they were casting away.  A poor man's son who could work his way to a horse and mail, and so win the heart of a girl that she would go with him even to the frontier, could find love and wealth and glory, raise himself to knighthood and his children to the nobility, and all while being devoted to the service of God.

Such times were heady indeed.

Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages:  From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500 (New York:  St. Martin's Press, 1977), 37-9, 48.


Here's the process for withholding privileged documents if you're a reasonably principled lawyer.  You put together the entire universe of documents that appear to be responsive to the document request.  Then you examine every single document to determine whether it falls within an established privilege, usually "work product" or "attorney-client."  The first cut of "work product" documents would include anything that could possibly be said to quote or reflect advice that the client received from counsel.  For the "attorney-client" category, the first cut would include anything from the attorney to the client or vice versa, including anything cc'ed to the law firm.

If only you got to stop there, document production would be a breeze.  The next step is harder.  In the case of work product, for instance, often the main document is OK, but a line or two might say, "As you know, counsel advised us that ______," and the blank would need to be redacted.  In the case of attorney-client privilege, you're not going to get away with withholding everything that was circulated past the lawyers.  If the cc list included anyone who wasn't a client, for instance, it goes back in the pile to be produced, because the privilege requires a showing that the advice was given and held in confidence.  Even if the cc list is made up exclusively of lawyers and clients, it still has to involve the quest for or rendition of legal advice.  You can't shield ordinary business documents from production by slapping a "lawyer cc" on them, though that gambit is often tried.

Even when you finish this more rigorous secondary process, you don't simply get to keep the documents you think are privileged and tell the other side to pound sand.  You have to produce a privilege log, a little chart that identifies each document, including its date, its recipients, and enough about its general nature to explain why you claim a privilege attaches to it.  This is a critical stage, because the judge and any competent lawyers in the case can take one look at your privilege log and see whether you're serious.  The absence of a privilege log, or the absence of detail, is a big red flag that screams "My idea of screening for privileged documents to sort everything into two piles:  the documents that will embarrass me and the documents that won't."  It's a more common approach than you might think.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is making a very reasonable demand today for a privilege log of the "Fast and Furious" documents withheld by the White House on the ground of executive privilege.  He's also on solid ground with the following observations:
It's very difficult to understand how an executive privilege could attach to documents about a program the President claims not to have had any knowledge of.   Nor is it easy to understand how the Attorney General can assert with a straight face that the program in question dates from the Bush administration, and that he terminated it many months before he now asserts he even became aware of it.   In a trial, this kind of thing would prompt the filing of what we used to call a "motion to get real."

Discovery disputes are boring.  Judges hate to get involved in them, so they tend to blow them off by taking a "plague on both your houses" approach, which gives crummy lawyers an incentive to abuse privileges and hide evidence.  The media is doing the same thing right now, painting the picture of yet another partisan attack based on an arcane legal theory, which voters should tune out in frustration.  I hope they don't.

Knives as "Arms"

Volokh has an interesting examination of case law regarding whether knives are "arms" for Second Amendment purposes.

A lot seems to turn on whether a class of weapon is regularly used in "civilized warfare."  That standard would seem to make it proper to carry a Kabar, since it was military issue and is still regularly carried by soldiers, sailors and Marines...

...but not a Buck knife, which is primarily for hunting.  Yet the design is substantially the same, except the Buck 119 Special is a little shorter.

It's nice to know that swords still turn up as 'weapons of civilized war.' They're not as random or clumsy as a handgun, either.

On the Need for "Home Economics" Courses in School

Via Yahoo questions:

R. Lee Ermey, Bus Monitor








Cheer up

From Frank J. Fleming:

'The Law' is the Name of that Ass You Rode Over the Border

Senator Rubio, on illegal immigration:
Well, what about you?  Would you let your children die rather than violate the laws of a country to which you owe no citizen's loyalty?  Or would you get on the ass and ride?

The Most Peaceful Place on Earth



This year, it's Chicago.

Take the Road

Now I Understand



Another Example

Via Reason magazine, which has done yeoman work on this issue:
As the article notes, the Justice Department has decided to go to court in favor of the notion that Federal agents have a right to hold a gun to the head of 11-year-old children.  I'm pretty sure that no such right can possibly exist, though they plainly have the power at present.

Anyway, the Ninth Circuit found that this conduct was "unreasonable."  So when does someone at DEA go to jail for unreasonably deploying lethal force against an 11-year-old during a wrongful raid?  Never, that's when.

What 'People' Are We Talking About?

Bob Krumm on Obama's refusal to enforce DOMA drug laws school standards gambling laws immigration laws:
"Every law is a limit on the people," eh?  So what the anarchists really need is just to elect a President, who can refuse to enforce any of the laws?

But which "people" are we talking about here?  The law in this case is a restriction on peoples who are not American citizens:  it restricts them from moving to America without a permit.  The restriction doesn't particularly affect the American people.

The preamble to the Constitution suggests that it is the people of the United States who ordain and establish the government, for ends of their own.  They are good ends, but they are not universal ends:  and the category of people who established and ordained the United States is not universal either.

Maybe Krumm is right in general:  maybe it's generally a good thing if the law goes unenforced.  Maybe it's fine to have a lot of laws on the books that have no force in practice.

Somehow, though, I doubt it.  That sounds to me like a vision of the law as the sword of Damocles:  a deadly thing hanging over my head, fit to fall at any time.  But -- for now -- a little string keeps it from my skull.

A Pretty Good Run

Tallulah Gorge

The Tallulah River, from atop the Gorge

Beef, Bread, and Beer

Father's Day

From Sippican:
- Harmon Killebrew