Thursday, July 28, 2016

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Wyoming History - Top Ten Politicians

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Wyoming History - Top Ten Politicians: Like many Americans, I watched a bit of both the Republican and the Democrat conventions in the past two weeks. Makes me think about some o...

Meanwhile, the Vikings landed and were defeated by regulation

With the Republican and Democratic races going on nationally, resulting in the nominations of the two least popular and most distasteful candidates in living memory. . . assuming your memory absorbs more than a century of context, and the local races featuring bizarre arguments amongst Republicans (the only ones here, probably, who stand a real chance) about who is most conservative, etc., perhaps you missed that the story that the Vikings have landed.

Or that they haven't.

They're trying to, but they might not make it.

Here's the reason why, as quoted from The New York Times:
After making stops at Canadian ports, the Draken’s crew was told by Coast Guard officials last week that if it wanted to sail through the Great Lakes, it had to hire a certified pilot, paid at an hourly rate that would amount to about $400,000 by the trip’s end. If unable to pay, the vessel would be forced to turn back.
That is, truly, absurd.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Attributed to Leon Trotsky, but perhaps apocryphal.  




Yesterday, while driving home from Laramie after depositions, I listed to a Pritzer Military History Library podcast featuring a retired U.S. general regarding future wars.  It was quite interesting, and the speaker was quite insightful  Included in his comments was the quote above, made in regards to his view that a common failure on the part of the United States is to believe you can elect what wars you choose to be interested in and participate in.  He's quite right.  Indeed, the war with ISIL was at least partially referenced in his quote by suggestion, if not outright.

As I was traveling and haven't been following the news too closely I missed, until last night, that ISIL operatives in France had broken into the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy and killed, and by that we can say martyred Father Jacques Hamel, the pastor of that church, who was offering daily Mass for four people.  They came in and slit his throat, took the church goers hostage, and tried to use them as a shield.  The French police, as is typical for French police, shot and killed them.

These people, that is the ISIL operatives, are at war with you, assuming that you are not a completely observant radical Sunni.  If you are Christian of any type, you are their enemy. For that matter, if you are a Muslim of any other stripe, you are their enemy as well.

It matters not that you have done nothing. You may feel that you are safe and secure loving everyone and wishing the best upon all humanity.  It matters not.  And you'd better wake up.

People are expressing shock and horror that they'd attack a Catholic church in France.  But why wouldn't they?  They've brutally murdered Christians all over the Middle East and torn down churches, and let's be frank, almost all, if in fact not all, of the indigenous Christians they've attacked have been Catholics or Orthodox of one or another various types, and while it sometimes surprises Protestants to learn this, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, disunited thought they may be, are so close to each other that they regard each other as valid and in the words of Pope Benedict, they are the two lungs of the body of Christ. The disagreement between them is not vast, even if real.

I note that as ISIL attacking Catholic and Orthodox churches is a significant event in ways that Westerners have a hard time grasping.  It's the ISIL equivalent of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor.  It goes right to the heart of how they perceive us, our beliefs, and our strengths.  It's an attack on all of us, as at the end of the day, as one Central American friend of mine who doesn't attend any church has noted, "we're all Catholic".  Westerners live in a world which, as John Cardinal Newman recognized, has been so impacted by the Catholic Church that nearly everything about our world view, in one way or another, stems from that.  In the Middle East the Orthodox stand a close second, but then they would, as the distinction between the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox is one that a person almost has to be Orthodox or Catholic to grasp, and even a lot of them don't grasp it.

In the minds of our enemies, and they are our enemies, as they have chosen to be your enemies, we are all Catholics.  I am, of course, but in their minds, so are you.  You are a "Crusader", in their view, and by using that definition they use a flawed history of that defensive effort in the West.  We need to understand that as well.  The Crusades, a term that didn't exist at the time they were conducted, were not an offensive war against the Muslim Middle East, but rather a defensive war against the advancing Turkish influenced Muslim offensive.  They were not wholly successful long term, but overall, if we consider that they were part of the same history that saw Charles Martel arrest the Muslim advance just outside of Parish, we need to grasp what they're proposing to do.

They don't care if you go to Mass daily, weekly, or if you attend the Assembly of God church in the next town.  They don't care if you go to church at all. They don't even really care if you aren't a Christian.  They do care that you are not Sunni Muslim and that you have a world view that expresses a belief in the equality of all men, the equality of men and women, and the free exercise of free will, all Catholic concepts that the larger culture has adopted.  If you believe in free speech, free exercise of religion, the dignity and worth of women, you are their enemy and you deserve to die.  By striking out at a Catholic Church in France, they're striking directly at that, and they know it, even if you do not.

Well, you should.

And that you do, you have some choices to make, and one of those choices is whether you are going to recognize that there's a war on, and its of an existential nature so deep that it strikes right at the foundations of the world and what the world's people should be allowed to believe, or even if they have the right to believe anything.  

As part of that, and particularly if you are French right now, you also have to decide if your personal beliefs have any foundation at all to them. France, amongst Western European nations, has been particularly troubled along these lines, but all Europe suffers from it today.  You can decide that at the end of the day your values just boil down to it being nice to be nice to the nice, or you can really look at where they come from. If they come from nowhere, you are in real trouble, as they are then pretty meaningless.  If you know where they come from, you should act on that, and indeed, it looks as though France has in fact started to. 

I dare say, even though its a hugely unpopular concept in the West (not so much in the East) that it may also be time for Christian leaders, including members of that Faith that was just attacked, to realize that Christianity can have, and has had, a pretty muscular side to it in the past from time to time.  The Crusades itself are an example of that.  And of course Christ informed his apostles that those who did not own a sword should go out and by one.  Christianity is of course truly a religions of peace, and founded by The Prince of Peace, but perhaps that doesn't mean that simply regarding all members of all religions as peaceful and our brothers is called for at all time.  Christians have not tended to want to call a spade a spade in all circumstances in recent decades, and perhaps taking a look at this offshoot of Islam which has drawn the sword and calling it out for that may be in order, and by extension, calling up on all Muslims to make a choice.


Alpha emerges from bankruptcy as twins, and the unemployment rate goes up.

In mixed local economic news, Alpha has emerged from bankruptcy, but not as one company.  It's now two, and the local expression of it is the new company, Contura.  Apparently the Wyoming assets are regarded as more viable than the Appalachian ones, so it's questionable if both companies will survive, but at least the bankruptcy is over and the company has reemerged as a Wyoming mining company that is still in business.

Countering that, a bit, the state announced that 7,600 jobs were lost in the state last year, which for a state with a population the size of Wyoming's is quite significant.  No turn around is expected yet, so the losses can probably be anticipated to continue.

Training horses for the 16th Light Cavalry at Sibi Camp, Baluchistan, 1935



The training does not appear to be going particularly well.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Packing Heat

Recently I posted this item about concealed carry of firearms:
Lex Anteinternet: Packing Heat:  M1911 Colt pistol. Let's turn to a topic that makes people scream and yell at each other, as well as to simply quit listening t...
In that, I made this point
And let's next an uncomfortable truth. . . a lot of policemen aren't exactly marksmen.

Now, in fairness, maybe this guy was.  But policemen aren't the equivalent of snipers, or even accomplished pistoleros.  They're policemen. Their job is pretty varied and most of them never fire a shot in anger, television portrayals aside.  And frankly the track record of large city police forces isn't necessarily all that spectacular in this area.  That may well be because, with all the various thing they do, shooting a pistol well, which isn't necessarily the first thing most policemen have in mind when they become policemen, isn't necessarily their first priority.  By way of some examples of surprising police gun play, police action in New York City on occasion provides a good example.  A person can easily find examples of New York police firing large numbers of shots and hitting comparatively little, or if they are hitting, firing far more shots that would seemingly be required. 

Indeed, the New York Times has noted:
New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit
rate of 28.3 percent, according to the department’s Firearms Discharge Report. The police shot and killed 13 people last year.
In all shootings — including those against people, animals and in suicides and other situations — New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate (182 out of 540), and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away. Nearly half the shots they fired last year were within that distance.
In Los Angeles, where there are far fewer shots discharged, the police fired 67 times in 2006 and had 27 hits, a 40 percent hit rate, which, while better than New York’s, still shows that they miss targets more often they hit them.
New York Times, December 9, 2007.  The article goes on to note that the police departments in question argued that poor marksmanship was not the cause of their lack of hits, and they may be correct.  But we can still draw two conclusions from this at a bare minimum.  Maybe in an armed
spat more than one man or woman with a pistol is a good thing and maybe police aren't the world's greatest pistol marksmen.  Indeed, hitting things with pistols requires some dedication.

 Illustration of a New York policeman who has passed the civil service
examination.  He's stopping a horse that's apparently out of control and
thereby saving an innocent damsel.  While dates, this photo this
illustration does illustrate the truth that the police are a service
that does a lot more than just get into gun battles and that its not an
occupying army.  The fact that British police don't even routinely carry
firearms perhaps accidentally illustrates this. Truth be known, police
very rarely need them, and they aren't their main focus by a long shot.

Some would argue that this would apply to anyone, and perhaps it would, but in contrast to police, people who are single mindedly carrying a pistol may very well have a different mindset towards being proficient with a pistol.  Or at least they are not likely to be any worse, perhaps.
As if to emphasize this point, and some others, we now have had this past week the example of a health care worker, a black gentlemen, being shot by a policeman while trying to render aid to an autistic man.  The police department in the city in question, North Miami, has come out and said that the policeman, who was armed with a M4 type carbine, was aiming for the autistic man, not the rescuer.  The policeman was only 50 yards away, and M4s are fairly accurate.

That's a bad shot.

Now, I know that  I'm second guessing somebody in a horrible situation that I wasn't in, but at 50 yards?  He should have been able to make that shot.  That perhaps points out a bit of what I was trying to illustrate above.

What else can we take away from this?

Well we can thankfully take away from it that it was not an example of a racially biased shooting, thank goodness.  But I think we can see why African Americans are hypersensitive to this topic.

We might also, although a person hates to dwell on it, note that contrary to the way the press would have it about the "high powered" 5.56 rounds fired by the M4, it's not particularly lethal.  It's only a .22 caliber weapon.  There's a lot that goes into that I'm not going to go into, but it's not exactly a .458 Winchester Magnum or something.

Anyhow, while not fully related to everything I'd posted in my earlier entry, it does seem to prehaps illustrate something about police marksmanship, maybe.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church, Jackson, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church, Jackson, Wyoming







This is the very impressive Our Lady of the Mountains in Jackson, Wyoming. The stone Romanesque church is located on a little under a city block, and unfortunately is a bit hard to photograph, or at least I did a poor job of photographing it. Added to that, the weather conditions were less than ideal at the time.

I don't know when this church was built, but I believe it was built in the last 15 years, as I can recall going to Mass in Jackson as the older church, was an impressive, but small, log structure.

Nighttime scene during Lent.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Cognitive Disconnect on the left and right.

This is one of those posts I started long, long ago, and then sort of let hang there for awhile.  A series of posts by a niche columnists caused me to reconsider it and post it again.

One thing Facebook has really served to do is to vastly expand the amount of casual political commentary, from all political spectrum, I run into.  Well, in re-editing this, not just casual, but even "professional" if you will. And that's increased my running into the interesting cognitive disconnect to many people have in their political views.

People often cherish hard right or hard left notions as they feel they should, and it fits their view on politics in general, or even because it fits their view of one particular thing in particular.  It's interesting how this works.

For instance, one fellow I'm aware of lives in that fair land to our north and comments continually about American politics from a fairly left wing perspective. That's fine, but the other day (now a day far back on the calendar) he posted a long heartfelt item on Israeli politics and how, because they're another culture, we cannot judge them.  Eh?  If a non American can judge American politics that some non American and non Israeli can judge Israeli politics.  Israel, here, however gets a free pass because it's Israel.  That doesn't make very much sense.  It just fits into his worldview.

Quite a few left wing folks I know are very much in favor of stringent gun control and won't consider anything else on that topic. This is always to "save lives" and they won't tolerate any concept that it won't. The same people, however usually have no problem with ending life before it comes into the world, which if the same logic were applied, would absolutely require that to be the state of the law.  Odd.

A selection of those folks are big on legalizing marijuana, even though more and more evidence is building that it has detrimental effects on the brain and its a public safety hazard. How can you be for banning one thing you think is a public safety and personal hazard while arguing to legalize something that is also a public safety and personal hazard?   Either you're going to require the state to probibit everything that's dangerous from being available, or you are not.   You can't hold both opinions, logically.

Indeed, almost nobody, left or right, is for banning booze, but it's undoubtedly the biggest public safety and personal hazard around.  People like to cite the "failed example" of Prohibition, but in reality, Prohibition was actually a success.  People just didn't like it.

Expanding things out, some time ago I saw on Facebook a post by a fellow who ciculated a misquote of H.L. Mencken's.  The quote offered was, in its correct form:
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Now, the irony of this is that the person who posted the quote was directing it at the GOP race at the time, and more particularly he was addressing it towards Donald Trump.  I don't mean to suggest that Trump is a moron, he clearly is not, no matter what you think of him, but I point this out as that's who he was posting it about.  However, as the same fellow has a lot of conservative friends they leaped right in, not appreciating that, and made comments about how that had happened in the form of President Obama.

Once again, no matter what you think of him, President Obama is in no way, shape or form a moron.  Indeed, I'd guess that no matter who is the next President, they will not be as intelligent as President Obama who is a highly intelligent man. That doesn't mean I agree with Obama on everything, and indeed I disagree with him more often than not, but I note this as people who are asserting that he (or Trump) are morons are doing so simply because they are in the opposite political camp.  Indeed I'd dare say that Obama has taken more abuse of this type than any President since Ronald Reagan.  Being in university at the time Reagan was President I well recall that, according to what I was hearing, he was both a moron and a fascist.   Obama, in contrast, is according to some a moron and a Marxist. Well, none of that is true.

Expanding this out, once columnist I'm aware of is outright hostile to Donald Trump.  A lot of columnist are outright hostile to Donald Trump, that's fine, but this particular columnist is known only because he focus on religion in his writings and is known, therefore, as a religious columnist.  The irony here is that this particular person's faith holds extremely strong opinions on matters of life and death, and including the lives of those who have not yet been born, and by implicitly backing Hillary Clinton he's basically backing a candidate who is very obviously in favor of conduct that this religion holds to be a mortal sin.  What constitutes a mortal sin is not as simple as it may at first seem to be, to those who are not familiar with this in depth, in that it requires knowledge that the conduct is a mortal sin, but almost everyone who writes from that prospective well knows that the underlying conduct is a mortal sin which then raises the question of what arguing for the election of a person, implicitly, who supports conduct that's grave in nature and which is regarded as a mortal sin amounts too.  I'd hesitate to do that, if I were he.

Indeed the same columnist writes quite a bit on gun control, which at least isn't charged with the same apparent danger to ones soul in whatever position a person might take, but like a lot of issues its not that simple and some of the articles strike me as snarky.  I've addressed gun control above, but I'm often struck by how the debate quickly often is marked by Reductio ad absurdum.  I've written a bit on gun control here, and I'll admit that I'm opposed to it on legal, factual, and philosophical grounds, but the debate certainly doesn't always run that way.  Indeed, very often at least the anti vote is really snobbish and seems to assume that the entire world out to be sitting at Starbucks sipping some absurdly odd and over priced coffee product while you are reading The New Yorker and wearing Buddy Holly frames.  Not so much.

By the same token, there are quite a few people locally who take positions on energy issues based, it would appear, simply on their political alignment.  We're undergoing a revolution in energy production and we better face it, and it makes little difference if you are a Republican or Democrat in regards to that.  But to listen to people, you'd think otherwise.

Well, I guess this sort of thing has always been the case. But in a year of political theater of the absurd following years of political dysfunction, we could hope for better.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Wyoming History - Virginia Cole Trenholm

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Wyoming History - Virginia Cole Trenholm: Virginia Cole Trenholm is no longer a household name in Wyoming, too bad, she should be. Trenholm was raised and educated in Missouri and ...

Roads to the Great War: Lives and Treasure: What World War I Cost the Unit...

Roads to the Great War: Lives and Treasure: What World War I Cost the Unit...: The United States mobilized about 4.800 million men in World War I. About 2.086 million went overseas, and about 1.390 million saw combat...

Friday, July 22, 2016

The Preparedness Day Terrorist Attack: July 22, 1916

A bomb went off went off at San Francisco's Preparedness Day Parade, killing ten and wounding forty.  While two labor leaders were convicted for the terrorist act, they later had their sentences commuted due to the lack of any real evidence associating them with the acts.  The perpetrators have never been identified.

Why San Francisco had their parade on a day other than the Flag Day celebration that was the rule I don't know.  But this event occurred on this day, in 1916. 

Preparedness Day was an event authored by the Administration following the passage of the National Defense Act which recognized that we were on the verge of war with somebody.  Maybe Mexico.  Maybe Germany. Maybe Mexico and Germany.  Times were tense.

The times were also increasingly radical, as we will see soon in some additional posts, and anarchists and radical socialistic were very much a factor in various movements around the world, including the United States, at that time.  Indeed, not all that long ago on this blog we read of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland which featured a radical socialist element, which tends to be forgotten.

This event is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this is an event which we'd presume to read more in our own time rather than a century ago.  It's also a terrible example of miscarried justice as those convicted of the act never really seemed to have any connection with it, which should have been obvious in the administration of justice that's impartial.  While the perpetrator has never been identified, there are strong suspicions about who was responsible, and it seems very clear that very radical elements were responsible.

Scary times in the US, to say the least. This came in the midst of  the mobilization of the National Guard, a raging war in Europe, and a nearly universal belief that the United States and Mexico would soon be at war.

Friday Farming: Women's Land Army


Another example of the US Women's Land Army during World War One.

Oh I know, you've heard that women first worked outside the home during World War Two.  Ain't true.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Retirement

I ran this item back in March of 2014:

Lex Anteinternet: Retirement: If you are in business, or read business news, or listen to any type of commentary at all, you're going to hear a lot about retirem...
Something that I wasn't aware of then, and have only learned recently, is that the average American retirement age falls in between 58 years old and 62 years of age.  62 is when the generational cohort I'm in can first take Social Security, which explains part of that.

But not all of it.

Ill health, whether it be the natural or unnatural deterioration of the body, and mental factors, including the natural deterioration of the mind in some circumstances, or the cumulative impact of years of stress on others, or unemployment of older workers, all play a significant factor.  In this way, perhaps, we're closer to earlier generations in regards to the close out of our work years than we might suppose.

It's interesting, but perhaps natural, that we've come to associate "retirement age" with age 65, which for generations has been the age at which a person is fully eligible for Social Security.  Interestingly, that same age was adopted by the Canadian government for its full retirement.  65 is not the age for post Boomer retirees in these regards in the US any longer, however.  In my generational cohort its age 67.  In the UK it was age 65 for men and age 60 for women for eons, although that is going up.  65 is common in many European countries as well, as are differential ages for men and women, with women's uniformly being younger where the ages are not the same.  So, we have to assume that placing retirement in the 60s is for a real reason, as so many nations do it.  After all, if countries as divergent as Vietnam (60 men/55 women) and Ireland (66 men and women) take this approach, it must mean something.

It doesn't mean that a person will be in super health, or even capable of working, at that age, however.  Retirement sites like to show healthy couples in their 60s enjoying life in exciting ways, but many people by their late 50s are in pretty darned bad shape.

All of which may mean nothing at all, or which may be serious food for thought.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Monday at the Bar: Trouble in the legal profession hits the CST.

 Public domainDepiction of trial by combat, with combatants properly aligned to give each smiling combatant the advantage of the sun, unbekannter mittelalterlicher Künstler - Dresdener Bilderhandschrift des Sachselspiegels, hrsg. v. Karl v. Amira, Leipzig 1902, Neudruck hrsg. v. Heinrich Lück, Graz 2002.  From Wikipedia Commons.  This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less.

I've written more than once about the reports of distress amongst legal practitioners here on this site.  Most recently I did that in an item on Alcohol and the Law.  In some of those I've been a little skeptical about what I was reading, but I've reached the point where the evidence seems sufficiently overwhelming (although there are a few doubters) that I'll concede its correct.

Indeed recently I've had a couple of odd instances in which this topic has come up in one fashion or another.  For one, I was sitting waiting for a deposition to commence when an out of state lawyer, a super friendly fellow, started talking about it (the topic came sort of out of the blue and I really don't know how it came up).  He went on a long litany of the statistics, it was like reading a journal article on it, about the topic, going into addictions lawyers have to alcohol, drugs, women, etc. and how destructive it was.  And this from opposing counsel.  I hard knew what to make of it, frankly. 

Anyhow, this past weekend Casper Star Tribune columnist Joan Barron, who is a CST columnist whom I really like, had an article on the Wyoming state program.  I was truly surprised, but I'll give credit to her and to the state bar for trying to publicize what they're doing.  Her article had this interesting set of observations in it:
Some people regards lawyers as rich fat cats in suits who don’t deserve sympathy. Some lawyers are well-off, but the average salary isn’t that stunning.
And they are the professionals people turn to when they are in trouble. They also are the men and women assigned to defend indigents, who have no other options.
Think Atticus Finch of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” admittedly a romantic and idealist portrait of a small-town lawyer. Or the more realistic case of the late Gov. Ed Herschler of Kemmerer, who neglected his solo practice to appeal successfully to the U.S Supreme Court the death sentence of a transient he had been assigned to defend, a man he disliked.
She goes on to detail that there were apparently four lawyer suicides in recent years, of which only one was openly that and the others disguised.  I know the guy who had the open one, and indeed, I was in a hearing against him the day prior in which he asked for an extension in his case, which I agreed to.  I've felt horrible about it ever since as it makes me feel like I opened the door up a bit as it gave that case a window for a replacement lawyer it wouldn't have otherwise.

Anyhow,  the article details the new Wyoming State Bar program, which apparently all state bars or at least nearly all of them now have.  It's good that the state bar has one, but I have to wonder how effective these things are.

That's for a variety of reasons, but I'll be frankly that I have come to view a lot of psychological problems as a combination of environmental and organic.  I'll fully conceded that our DNA's in our fallen state set us up for a lot of problems.  But I also think we've created a world which we're not really very well suited to live in, and that includes, I fear, our legal system.  We have an adversarial system, which is not only well known, but celebrated in the law.  The thesis is that the courtroom substitution for trial by combat of old serves to bring out the truth to the jury.  Maybe it does, although I truly have my doubts about that, but what it also does is to put a premium on combat, and all combat takes it toll on the combatants.


 Wounded British soldiers, World War One.  Note the stare of the man on the bottom left of photo.

I suspect that's in part what happens to some of the lawyers who end up in needing the help referenced above.  Years of judicial combat, financial strains, and simply the everyday pleas for help get to them.  I've known a few that seem to have run into such trouble and did indeed take refuge in the wrong places, booze, women, or whatever.  And I've also known a few who seemed to have developed very harsh personalities.

I won't claim to know what the solution to these things is.  Some people end up seeking help in medicine, and they likely should.  But this all takes me back to something I've mused about here before.  I have to wonder about our having built a world that we don't seem fit to live in, and about also creating, as part of that world, a legal system that seems to be going after the well being of some of those employed in it.  Why are we doing that?

 New York lawyers, 1916.

Addressing the legal system alone, what we should note is that technology and advances in communication, while the law believes that it has improved it, hasn't improved the life of lawyers one bit but, if anything, its made it infinitely worse.  If we go back to the year we've been focusing on so much here recently, 1916, most lawyers would have been either solo practitioners or small firm lawyers practicing locally and relying on the mail for communication. Some would have had phones by 1916, but many would not have. Local affairs would principally have been the ones they were involved with, although as we know from very old entries here even in the early 20th Century some Wyoming trial lawyers had state wide practices.  But in those state wide practices they still had to rely on the mail and they traveled principally by train, and occasionally by horse.  

That's quite a bit different from what I see now all the time, which is lawyers flying across country to attend one thing, and checking on others from their Iphone while they are there.  

Technology can't be put back in the box.  But things can be done.  And one of those things is to recognize that law, like politics, is all local. And that would mean discouraging or even preventing the erasure of the the state borders in the practice of law.  But the trend is going the other way.  Our Supreme Court has been complicit in flooding the state courts with out of state lawyers who are sometimes hyper aggressive while also not understanding the local rules and customs.  It's dragging the practice down a level or two and not aiding the practice here a bit.  A partial fix to this problem would be to restore the old rules that you can only practice where you have actually passed a real state bar, not something like the UBE, and that you must actually have some business connection with the state where you are practicing.

Additionally, maybe something should be done to take a page out  of European systems that are more inquiry based than ours.  If litigation is a search for the truth, maybe it ought to actually be a search for the truth.

Finally, maybe something has to be done about he process of legal education.  Indeed, this gets us to the topic of education in general, but again and again I'm struck by how we have a system that's largely designed to recruit the ignorant and burden them with expenses while being educated by individuals who know very little about actual practice. That has to mean that there are people recruited who are not suited for the endeavor.  Once a person is out of law school they're qualified to do exactly one thing, and one thing only, practice law.  Maybe they ought to have a taste of that practice simply as a qualifier to even enter law school, before they do.

Jeep celebrates its history.

We noted the 75th anniversary of the issuance of the contract for the 1/4 ton truck, that came to be known as the Jeep, here the other day. 

Well, not too surprisingly, Jeep has a really nice feature on its website celebrating its own history.

Well worth taking a look at, and not only on the 1/4 ton models, but on the other Jeep brand vehicles that have been made over the years.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: The Coup in Turkey. Perhaps not as disturbing as s...

Hmmm, so the coup failed, but will Turkish democracy survive?
Arrest warrants have also been issued for at least 2,745 judges and prosecutors across the country, according to Turkish media reports.
From the Washington Post.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. John's Episcopal Church, Jackson Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. John's Episcopal Church, Jackson Wyoming:



These photographs, taken in waning light, depict St. John's Episcopal Church in Jackson, Wyoming. There are actually two churches on the location, with this one being the new church built in 1995.

The photographs that appear below are the second church, built in 1916. This church is on the same half block as the 1995 church.  So here we have something that fits nicely into the 1916 theme we've been exploring this year.