Mickey

Not one mention of London Fletcher? Looking over the last three years, he would get my vote as the team MVP. I'd also mention, gulp, Rian Lindell. Kickers are tough to replace and have you seen what is available out there? Yeeeech. Lindell will probably lead the team in scoring this year.

Given how solid this defense has been, there aren't many positions that scream out for upgrading. If I was trying to improve it however, Posey's is one position that would get my attention as a possible upgrade. I'm just not sure where else you would go to try and improve the team in terms of defensive starters.

Do you have one with a targeting device that zeroes in on false piety? It is for a friend.

If you define "vicotry" as something abstract on the one hand and, under the circumstances, a virtual impossibility, then the whole operation is guaranteed to end in something other than victory. As it turns out, the most we could realistically achieve is to get rid of Saddam and his regime which, coincidentally, is the one thing everyone agrees was a good thing. Having won all that could reasonably be won, maybe its time to go or, at the least, it soon will be time to go. The armed forces have done that which they are very good at doing now we have them trying to do something they simply aren't designed to do. This is just a working idea, I have not thought it all through yet. Politically, I think this might appeal to both sides of the aisle. One major concern is that it would likely be viewed as caving in to al Queda. It might be viewed as yet another example of a democracy pulling out in response to terrorism. There has been too much of that from Lebanon under Reagan to more recently, Madrid.

I really should have posted a warning not to read anything at the site, besides the photo caption. Seeing that it was the Huffington site, I figured most of you wouldn't bother looking at anything else. Now I have gone and opened myself to liability in a "failure to warn" case. Drat.

Veteran of Korea, Viet Nam and the occupation of Germany dons protective gear before listening to a speech by George Bush: Veteran Bill Moyers

Umm....I'm not sure that whether Colin Powell accurately described Pottery Barn's precise in-store breakage rule is really the point. For the record, Powell is quoted by Woodward in Plan of Attack as referring to the "Pottery Barn Rule" and as describing it to the President: "Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It's the wrong thing to do. But you own it." Columnist Thomas Friedman claims they got the reference from a column he wrote in February 2003 where he used the term "pottery store rule". Friedman says that in speeches, he used the phrase "Pottery Barn rule". My point, sticking with the metaphor, is that this pot was already broken before we walked in to the store. We just picked up the sharpest pieces and tossed them away. Let the Pottery Barn pick up the rest.

Well, to the unschooled and uninitiated, it might seem like Robertson made contradictory statements or that he flat out lied. However, if you were learned in subtleties of Intelliget Lying theory, you would see how perfectly sound his statements were.

OOOOoooooo, does that mean we can bomb the 700 Club? Please, please, please say it does, pleeeeeeeeez. Just one bunker buster, thats all I'm asking for, for cryin out loud, give a guy a break wouldja?

Clearly. Ends that argument. So what do we do now? Declare war on all muslims everywhere I guess? It is a puzzlement.

Okay, keep dipping her pigtails in the inkwell to convince us you don't love her, we believe you. When did you first fall for her? Was it that cats and dogs movie?

That means we don't have to invite you to our parties. Whew, what a relief. Deb was worried she'd have to hide her bong.

CTM's a liberal now? Does that mean we have to start inviting him to our parties?

I'd laugh but in a week or so these jokes will be argued as bona fide facts in a book by Ann Coulter which will spend several months on the best seller list so it is hard to enjoy them now.

I don't know, did Kennedy ever vote for legislation allowing federal control of state martinis? Frist is clearly running for President and the entire Schiavo episode was one of the single most obvious and shameful acts of pandering I have ever witnessed and I have seen both parties pull some real whoppers over the years. At some point, Frist is going to want to bury that episode as his campaign progresses and I don't think it should be forgotten. He has already tried to back off of it when the autopsy results came back with one of those "I never said...." defenses. Thus, I dub him Senator Schiavo. It is catchier than "Senator Intelligent Design", his most recent hand job to the religous right. You can call Kennedy what you want, he isn't running.

If by intellectualizing you mean understanding what and why these people do what they do, I don't see what the problem with that is, it is not the same as siding with them, quite the contrary. Some extremely right wing, non-liberals are of the same opinion. The FBI studies serial killers and their whacked out fantasies to help in the effort to stop them and to catch them. Same thing here.

Wrongful death action baby. You lose either way. At least in NY though damages are much less in death cases. Where you really get into big bucks is when they linger for years and years. In Texas the grieving family can recover for their mourning and emotional loss. That is why you see such huge verdicts from there. Same case in NY could be worthless.

Yeah, Hitler is kind of an easy one though. Guys like that don't really come along that often, at least not ones with an entire, very powerful, nation at his fingertips. Lets say that instead of being chancellor of Germany, Hitler was, say, Chancellor of Goofistan, an island nation of 200 inhabitants off the coast of Nowhereania? Tougher choice. Translation: not every prick is worth a bullet.

Okay, we solved that one, Robertson is an idiot. Now we can move on to something more difficult. Motherhood, good or bad? Comments?

I can't believe I got blind sided by that one. Now I know how Drew Bledsoe feels.

That phrase has been eroded. The jury instructions now read in NY say that as long as a cause is a "substantial factor" in bringing about the injury, it can be a "proximate cause".

There are a lot of distinctions between the two but in terms of collecting a jugdment, they are both reachable, they just make it harder when it comes to real property. I think the reason it sounds strange is because that isn't what happened. I don't think they were "awarded title" to the property, I think that is how the sister settled it. In collections, you don't get title, you get a lien on the property (lis pendens) which can be foreclosed upon, you force a sale and your lien gets paid from the proceeds. The sister could offer to settle the case by signing over the property but that would be her choice. Maybe we need more detail but even so, I don't see any moral imperative at issue here, just the technical aspects of satisfying judgments. Since I always get my clients off, I have no experience with defending judgments

Right, but you know, I think standard negligence law would take care of that without some sort of national law barring illegal aliens from suing US citizens. Lets say I rob your house one night and in doing so, step on a rusty nail sticking out of the floor boards because you were too busy debating Intelligent Falling theory here to bother fixing. I get an infection and lose my leg and then sue you. The jury could and would find that my illegal act was the sole proximate cause of the injury thereby letting your lazy butt off the hook. I would be left to hobble off into the sunset without a penny.

Okay, so now you are reducing your proposed rule to one affecting collections of judgments issued in civil court cases. Such rules are a matter of state law so each state does what it wants. Typically, you can levy against property and force its sale to pay a judgment which is why OJ had to sell his Heisman, don't you recall the auction of much of his porperty? However, a person's primary residence in many states is exempt so it could not be foreclosed upon by a judgement creditor. I don't really see what difference it would make if they satisfied the judgment based on selling this guy's car, his jewelry or his land. I don't understand why, after recognizing a judgment and the right to collect, you somehow see a reason to draw a circle around some assets and not others. If the debtor wants to satisfy the judgment by signing over the land, why have a rule that prevents him from paying off his debt however he sees fit? The property was transferred to the debtor's sister and the creditors sued her based on the transfer being a fraudulent one, ie, done for the purpose off evading the debt. She recognzed that she had no decent defense to that so she settled the matter by forking it over. Why have a rule to stop her from doing what she wanted to resolve it? Why should a judgment debtor be able to evade a judgment just because the judgment creditor has their own legal problems? I just don't see what moral imperative is involved here.

Need more detail. At what point is their illegal presence to be determined and used to disqualify them from participating in a suit? When suit is filed, when a judgment is issued? When the collection of the judgment is attempted? When the indident which underlies the suit occurred? Lets say I cross the border illegally but buy property legally upon which you later trespass and cause damages valued at $100. If, before suit, I become "legal" can I then sue you for the $100? If I sue you and become "legal" the day before the trial, can the case continue? If I get a judgment and the day before I file the paperwork to garnish your wages to collect my damages I become "legal" is it okay to file the judgment? If I am illegal and later become legal and then you trespass, can I sue then? If I get deported after the trespass, can I sue once I am back on my home soil? How about if the "illegal" is a child. If she is raped by a pedophile who is a US citizen, can the prosecutor add victim's compensation to the sentence when the sicko is convicted or does she forfeit that right because she is in this country illegally? Its easy, out of frustration with a difficult problem, to sit back and issue blanket dictats regarding illegal aliens but once you sit back and think about how such a rule would work, it quickly becomes apparent that it is a ludicrous idea.