Monday at the bar on a Tuesday: Wyoming Judicial Nominees under Governor Gordon.

This is really remarkable:

Haroldson, Jennings: A partisan doesn't belong in the Wyoming Supreme Courts: A partisan doesn't belong in the Wyoming Supreme Court

I cannot ever recall seeing legislators write an op-ed about judicial nominees in Wyoming.  But here's one. As the op-ed states:

Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Kieth Kautz, after having served three decades, will be required by law to retire in March 2024, and the Commission has already presented its three names to Governor Gordon: Stuart Healy (currently serving as District Judge in Campbell, Crook, and Weston Counties), Robert Jarosh (a Cheyenne attorney), and Tim Stubson (a Casper attorney).

We are alarmed by the selection of Mr. Stubson, not because we disagree on nearly every political issue under the sun, but because of his active participation in divisive, partisan politics. Not only does Stubson regularly engage in partisan political debates on social media (which any judicial officer knows to refrain from), Cowboy State Politics has discovered that he is currently the chairman of two active Political Action Committees: the Wyoming Caucus PAC and the Team Wyoming PAC. Serving as the head of a PAC is an inherently partisan activity, which is why PACs are heavily regulated by the Wyoming Legislature and Secretary of State’s Office.

This editorial is directed at Stubson, and this part specifically aims at him:

Partisan politics are fun. Helping out on a political campaign or two can be exhilarating, especially when your candidate for governor wins. Going on PBS News Hour to share your love for Liz Cheney is definitely an accomplishment. But these are not the kind of activities an impartial jurist participates in.

Mr. Stubson served in the legislature, and then later ran for Congress.  He was one of the three top vote getters the first year that Liz Cheney ran.  Indeed, Stubson and a Teton County candidate likely put Cheney over the top, as they split the majority of the GOP vote, leaving her the top vote getter as a result.

Since then, Stubson has left the legislature and been a regular old citizen, practicing law, as the op ed notes. But he has been vocal in regard to the tragic shift of the GOP into the populist right, as has been his wife.

His partisan activities are the only reason that those authoring the op-ed are against him.

Is that a good basis to oppose him?

Well, judge's positions are political ones, no matter what we might wish to pretend.  Judge Freudenthal, a retiring Federal District Court judge in Cheyenne, was nominated when her husband was the Governor.  Judge Buchanan, a recent pick by Governor Gordon, stepped down from his elected office as Wyoming's Secretary of State in order to aim for that position, something that was quite controversial at the time.

But a greater issue is what's going on with Wyoming judicial picks in general.

There's not a single judge that I've experienced who is currently sitting whom I think is a "bad judge".  But Governor Gordon's picks have been, in my view, lacking quite often.  Indeed, this is so much the case that it's backroom talk amongst the lawyers, and not all that long ago the judicial nominating committee's Chief Justice chair complained that the committee was no longer getting all that many applicants for judicial positions.  Be that as it may, that didn't stop the committee from picking a very young lawyer to a judicial position who had been the Chief Justice's clerk.  

Moreover, by and large, civil litigators have the doors barred to them.  Under Gordon, the picks have been largely out of the criminal law or domestic fields, thereby removing a huge field of talent.  One of the three names up this time is out of the criminal law field, but I would note that the other two are out of the civil law arena.

The prior governor, Governor Mead, who was a practicing lawyer, had a dedicated, and open, policy of addressing the gender imbalance on the bench.  Given a female option, he normally went in that direction.  His choices were good ones, but it did mean that male applicants were pretty much out of the running in many instances through no fault of their own.  But since then, things have declined.

I've liked Gordon as a Governor, except in certain instances.  This is one of them.  Recent choices have been very young and in some cases hard to justify if merit alone was the qualifier.  The applicants do go through a process, but frankly, influence from the Supreme Court and the Governor's Office weighs pretty heavily.  The entire process has declined, and now potential applicants just sit it out.

And that's not a good thing.

Crocodile Tears.

Make no mistake about it, the same political party’s politicians that state they absolutely stand behind the Second Amendment cannot also rationally say they don’t support the 14th.

But they are.

The mantra is that if the Colorado Supreme Court finds that insurrectionist Donald Trump is disqualified from being on the ballot in 2024, because he’s an insurrectionist, that’s depriving the voters of a choice.

Which is, of course, exactly what the Second Amendment does in the case of gun control.  I’m not for it, but many voters are, only to have their votes deprived of them by the Courts.

And yes, such things do take votes away from voters, and choices away from them too. The Constitution sets age limits o who can run.  It sets nationality requirements.  And it prohibits insurrectionist from running.  By the same token, it prohibits a lot of firearms restrictions, and keeps the government from requiring you to be a member of a specific religion.

We are not an Athenian Democracy in which everything is decided by the vote. We are a Constitutional democracy.

Besides, a lot of Trumpite politicians are now fond of the dimwitted promise that We are not a democracy, but a Republic, which is stupid, but which weights the Constitution heavily.  That’s the entire basis, to the extent there is one, that the GOP worships the electoral college system, which is inherently anti democratic.

They swore an oath to defend it.  Apparently, few of them meant it.

Or. . . could it be that just like the death of an abusive father, or a boss who was an asshole, those praising Trump now will, in the case of public figures, be mighty glad to see him gone. . . ?  That way, they can maintain they always loved him, while, at the same time, go back to the back rooms, pour a tall shot of bourbon, and toast his demise, while rejoicing that they fooled the voters all along.

Oral Arguments

The Wyoming Supreme Court held arguments this week on an appeal of Judge Owens' ruling in Teton County that Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, and Right to Life of Wyoming would not be allowed to intervene in the ongoing abortion lawsuit.

The doomed appeal was by  Rodriguez-Williams, Neiman and Right to Life. 

While they can't be blamed for trying, intervention is discretionary and Owens said no. That's where that will stay.

The golden ticket.

America’s prestigious universities play a big role in determining who gets into America’s wealthy elite.

A degree from Harvard, Penn, or M.I.T., to take three examples, is a meal ticket to a lucrative job on Wall Street or a corporate law firm and to the richest and most influential people in the land.

Robert Reich.

Which is exactly what's wrong with the Ivy League system (I'll omit MIT from that).

Which is also why, quite frankly, government, particularly the Court's, ought to go on a 30 year moratorium on hiring Ivy League grads. 

Courthouses of the West: In Memoriam: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

Courthouses of the West: In Memoriam: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: 

In Memoriam: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

I'm late in posting this and, frankly, so many things have been posted it would hardly be necessarily.

Justice O'Connor was the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Frankly, even though this came in relative terms, in 1981, fairly close to the pioneering appointment of an African American to the Supreme Court bench, it was later than it should have been. Having said that, like Nixon going to China, coming by way of a conservative, Ronald Reagan, perhaps it meant more in real terms than it would have had it come under an earlier President, such as Jimmy Carter.

O'Connor had been a member of the Arizona Court of Appeals at the time of her appointment. She was a Westerner by birth, having been raised on a 198,000 acre cattle ranch in that state.  She attended Stanford as an undergrad and as a law student, and oddly enough had received a proposal of marriage from William Rehnquist while still a student.

Her accomplishments cannot be denied, but frankly, like a lot that Reagan did, her appointment has a mixed record.  I frankly don't think she was as great of jurist as people now wish to recall, and like many of the "conservative" justice of her era, she was conservative only in a very reserved way.  True conservatives wouldn't really reappear on the Supreme Court for many years, none of which takes away from her personal accomplishments.

Friday, November 23, 1923. Law and Radio.

President Coolidge was visited by members of Delta Theta Phi, a law fraternity.

On the same day, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union was established.

Germany banned the Communist and Nazi parties.  A third party, the Nationalist Party, was also banned.

Gustav Stresemann lost a vote of confidence in the Reichstag and resigned as the  Chancellor of Germany.

Australian radio station 2SB went on the air, giving Australia regular radio programming for the first time.  It is still on the air as Radio Sydny.

The 2024 Election, Part VIII. Speeding toward the missing bridge

 

One Year Until The General Election.

Ugh, there's a time when that would have seen like a long time.

And it still should.  Would that it would have been only 90 days prior to an election that anyone could even announce.

A full year of watching the clock count down.

A full year of pundits like Robert Reich telling you can't vote for a third party, and must vote for one of the two absurdities that are the current majority parties.

A full year of bizarro weird diction from Donald Trump.

A full year of two really old men compete for the votes of voter less than half their ages.

Nifty.

November 6, 2023

The latest polls show Trump beating Biden in the Fall election.

Simply amazing.

It'll all come down to five states, and about 100,000 voters, who will decide which of the two ancient men will lead the most powerful, if declining, nation on earth.

Both, FWIW, are showing signs of cognitive decline.  This has been obvious for a while, but it was mentioned in regard to Trump for the first time on one of the weekend news shows.  He's now getting noticeably confused and increasingly erratic.

Regarding cognitive decline, the fact that these are the nation's choices make it appear as the United States itself is suffering from cognitive decline.

While there will be plenty of it "it's not too late" comments, it pretty much is unless the Democrats dump Biden. The electorate doesn't want him, or Trump. And yet the parties insist on offering both of them. At least with the GOP, it's because their base really does want Trump, as frightening as that is.   The Democrats do not want Biden.

November 8, 2023

And yet another poll shows Biden slipping further behind, even as the Democrats did well in yesterday's election.

If Biden isn't replaced as the candidate, there will be a second Trump term.

November 9, 2023

Donald Trump, yesterday:

Kim Jong-un leads 1.4 billion people, and there's no doubt about who the boss is, and they want me to say he's not an intelligent man.

Geez Louise, this is wrong in so many ways.

First of all, 1.4 B is the approximate population of China.  North Korea has about 24M.

And nobody is saying that Kim Jong-un isn't intelligent, they're saying he's bad.

Trump has a thing for dictators. . . 

During the GOP debate, one of the candidates proposed bombing targets in Iran.

cont:

Joe Manchin will not be running for reelection to the Senate in West Virginia.

Manchin was quite conservative, a fact which had given him a power broker role in the Senate.  His departure, while not wholly unexpected, does put the GOP within striking distance of taking back the Senate.

November 10, 2023

Jill Stein has opted to lose again as the Green Party's candidate for President.

November 13, 2023

Tim Scott has dropped out of the GOP race.

In terms of serious candidates, that leaves Haley, Christie, DeSantis, and of course, Trump.  There are others, but they're already reached the point of now return. The winnowing process is now well-developed.

Overall in the Republican race right now, the following are the serious candidates in terms of still (sort of) being contenders against Trump.

Trump.

Doug Burgum

Chris Christie

Ron DeSantis

Nikki Haley

Asa Hutchinson

Of the above, Hutchinson should drop out, as his campaign is gaining no traction and is essentially the same as Christie's.  Burgum should drop out as well as his campiagn has generated little interest, mostly due to his own waffling on Trump.

GOP candidates still around that nobody is paying any attention to are:

Scott Alan Ayers   

Ryan Binkley

Robert S. Carney 

John Anthony Castro

Peter Jedick   

Perry Johnson

Perry Johnson   

Donald Kjornes

Mary Maxwell   

Glenn McPeters

Glenn J. McPeters    

Scott Peterson Merrell   

Darius L. Mitchell   

Vivek Ramaswamy

Sam Sloan   

David Stuckenberg   

Rachel Swift

Of these, only Ramaswamy is newsworthy, but most due to his being noisy and somewhat of a gadfly.  So, in terms of real candidates, what the GOP actually has is:

Trump.

Doug Burgum

Chris Christie

Ron DeSantis

Nikki Haley

Asa Hutchinson

Vivek Ramaswamy

On the Democratic side, there are actually just about as many people running, but really only Biden and Dean Phillips are serious candidates. . . so far.

While it'll put me outside the mainstream, I very strongly suspect that Joe Manchin and Joe Biden have had a conversation about Biden dropping out, and Manchin stepping in.

Manchin is in his early 70s, which is still old, but younger than Trump.  He's also a bonafide centrist.  Liberal Democrats would hate this development, centrist Democrats, independents and traditional Republicans would welcome it.  It would be a smart move.  Right now, I'm predicting, as radical as it is, that Biden will drop out this month, followed by Manchin announcing a run.

In other news, Californian Republican House member McCarthy is indicating he may not run for reelection.

November 14, 2023

Apparently a retired lawyer has filed a 14th Amendment challenge to Trump, and oddly Cynthia Lummis who doesn't run again until 2026, in court.  Secretary Gray sent out a press release on the matter.

Secretary Gray Condemns Attempt to Remove Donald Trump and Cynthia Lummis from Future Ballots in Wyoming

     CHEYENNE, WY – In response to a recent filing in Wyoming District Court seeking to remove Donald Trump and Cynthia Lummis (whose term ends in 2026) from future ballots in Wyoming, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray announced his plans to vigorously defend against the filing (Newcomb v. Chuck Gray).

     “The attempt to remove Donald Trump and Cynthia Lummis from the ballot is outrageously wrong and repugnant to our electoral process,” Secretary Gray said in a statement. “I am preparing a vigorous defense to stop these blatant, radical attempts to interfere with Wyoming’s elections. The weaponization of the Fourteenth Amendment to remove political opponents from the ballot undermines the sanctity of the Constitution. We are preparing to file a motion to dismiss to block this attempt at election interference. And we are committed to protecting the integrity of our elections and ensuring that the people of Wyoming can choose who to elect for themselves.”

November 15, 2023

A Michigan Court has rejected a 14th Amendment claim against Trump.  It will be appealed.

November 17, 2023

Rep. Hageman went after Tim Newcomb's lawsuit regarding Trump being disqualified from being on the ballot for insurrection.

This isn't really surprising, Hageman is in political debt to Trump, but it's interesting in that she partially attacks the effort as unconstitutional and for using the legal system.  Attempting to use the legal system is exactly what Trump attempted in order to try to retain office, and Trumpites have continually taken refuge in that fact.

Last Prior Edition:

The 2024 Election, Part VII. Drama

Blog Mirror: Have they no sense of decency?

A Robert Reich item about Elise Stefanik:

Have they no sense of decency?

The descent of Stefanik has been epic.  It hardly makes sense, at least in the case of a person who has any integrity at all. Starting off as a centrist, she's turned into a Trump hack.

This effort to sanction the court and the court's clerk is shocking.

Stefanik is really playing with fire here. There's at least a halfway decent chance she'll be sanctioned for filing such a bogus challenge. And if the country survives the next election, long term she's going to have the same sort of reputation that Joe McCarthy now has, save for the fact that she'll fully deserve it and McCarthy only partially did.

Unlike McCarthy, Stefanik is a mother. What a legacy for that child will be left.

The 2024 Election, Part VII. Drama

September 23, 1923.

Probably not the right place to put it, but it seems to fit into an election atmosphere everywhere that's a bit over the top.

Casper's mayor has resigned after having been accused of physically assaulting his wife in Texas. In resigning, he stated.

It is readily apparent to me that the City Council has abandoned me, band members who I have worked with for a number of years, have ended their relationship with me and it is apparent to me that every effort is being made to destroy me to the public.

Well, after photographs were run of his wife with a major scar suture on her head, no matter what happened, it'd be in the press.  Perhaps the surprising thing this year is that it turned out to matter, given that so little otherwise seems to in regard to public conduct.

We will note that he's disputing her allegations, stating that she was intoxicated and fell.

He'd been in the press with comments a fair amount, including this recently:

Challenging airport funding and looking at subsidization of transportation in a different light.

I didn't note it there, but he's a pilot himself and did a crash landing not all that long ago.

Now about the ongoing races:

President.

Democrats:

Joe Biden; the incumbent.  

Marianne Williamson.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

Republicans.

Donald Trump. 

Nikki Haley

Vivek Ramaswamy.  

Perry Johnson,

Larry Elder 

Asa Hutchinson. 

Tim Scott.

Ron DeSantis

Chris Christie

Mike Pence.

Doug Burgum

Will Hurd 

Steve Laffey 

Ryan Binkley 

Green Party

Cornel West.  

American Solidarity Party

Peter Sonski  

U.S. Senate

Republicans

John Barrasso, maybe?

The long serving Senator has not announced if he's running or not.  Right now, because it's pretty obvious that Mitch McConnell is headed on to the next realm, he stands to potentially be Senate Majority Leader.

Reid Rasner.

Rasner has announced and is running essentially as a far right populist.  If Barrasso stays in, his campaign will be forgotten within days of the primary election.

September 25, 2023

Former President Trump's comments are getting increasingly extreme, even unhinged.

He's now openly threatening the Press.  The scary part here is that his supporters will fall right in line with this.

September 27, 2023

A New York court has determined, in a partial ruling in a case, that Donald Trump committed fraud in the process of building his real estate empire, apparently by misrepresenting his assets.  The ruling does not determine damages.

Joe Biden joined UAW picketers yesterday.

September 29, 2023

Some members of the Converse County GOP wish to censure Rep. Forrest Chadwick, whose districts straddles Natrona and Converse Counties.  Included in their proposed censure is "failed to vote in a manner that has any semblance to the oath that he made to God to ‘support, obey and defend the Constitution’ or any semblance to the Wyoming Republican Party Platform.”

I'm not certain at all that the oath legislators take is a divine one.  They take an oath, but I don't think it's in that context.

Ironically, moreover, many of the populist far right, including in Wyoming, have been supporting sedition, at least in their statements, which is clearly violative of their oaths if they're in office, as it amounts to subverting the U.S. Constitution.  Lying, in the Catholic view, with Catholicism being an Apostolic and therefore an original branch of Christianity (and given Apostolic succession, the original branch) is regarded as a grave sin in some circumstances, which does invoke a person's relationship with the Divine, but not for the same reason.  Here too, however, the far right position is rather ironic, given what is just noted above.

WyoRino, which recently failed to make an appearance at a Natrona County debate, is mentioned by name.

The effort appears to be tied to his vote against the Life is a Human Right Act as he thought it was unconstitutional and his vote for the budget in the last session.  A person could be upset about either of these (although It's hard to grasp being upset about a necessary budget), but that doesn't amount to a violation of his oath of office.

October 3, 2023

I know nothing about Butler, and she may be supremely qualified, but its hard not to assume there's a fair amount of box checking going on in the selection, something that Democratic politicians are particularly likely to do. Butler is black, fulfilling a Newsom promise, and she's gay, making her the first black openly gay U.S. Senator. Should that matter?  No, but its statistically improbable while also fulfilling promises to one major Democratic demographic and also satisfying, maybe, the desires of another.

John Kelly, a former adviser to Donald Trump, slammed his former boss in a CNN interview, stating:

What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.

October 4, 2023

The Trump campaign, in what should be regarded as an expression of concern, is calling on the GOP debates to end, so all resources can be focused on defeating Joe Biden.

A plea to end attention to other candidates, even though they have not touched him so far, demonstrates that something is causing concern in the Trump camp.

October 6, 2023

Cornell West, who may get as many as 5 or 6 votes next November, has ditched the Green Party in favor of running an independent campaign in hopes of actually getting on the ballot in various states.

This is his third switch this season.

West is a figure who fascinates American leftist and is otherwise wholly unknown to the American public.

October 8, 2023

Steve Laffey, a long shot candidate for the Oval Office on the GOP ticket has dropped out of the race and dropped out, as well, from the Republican Party. He called the GOP "dead".

October 9, 2023

Robert F. Kennedy is now running as an independent.

cont:

Will Hurd has backed out and endorsed Nikki Haley.

October 11, 2023

Far right populist Kari Lake has announced a bid for an Arizona Senate seat.  She will run against independent incumbent Kyrsten Sinema, the Senates most photogenic member, and Arizona Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego. This assuming, of course, that Sinema runs.

October 12, 2023

Cenk Uygur, a media personality, has announced his candidacy for the Democratic ticket for the Oval Office.

As he was born in Turkey, he's not eligible to be President.

Trump, in a recent interview, stated, regarding Benjamin Netanyahu, the following:

He was not prepared. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared. And under Trump, they wouldn't have had to be prepared.

Why doesn't it occur to Trump supporters how deeply weird statements like that are? 

October 17, 2023

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso has endorsed Kari Lake for Senator from Arizona.

This is politics, of course, but it really shows how far people are willing to go for no other reasons other than politics.  Lake is an extremist.  The calculation probably is that she might win, and you'd want her to owe you some favors.

October 25, 2023

The absurd flap on which Democratic primary will occur first means that Biden might not appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot.

October 27, 2023

Larry Elder has dropped out of the Republican race.

cont:

Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips announced that he is running for President on the Democratic ticket and that he will seek to appear on the New Hampshire ballot.

October 28, 2023

Mike Pence has dropped out.

From here on out, with Pence breaking the dam, candidates will start dropping out of the GOP race. Pretty soon, it will be Christie against Trump.  

While it expresses a minority view, my guess is that as Trump looks more and more childish and faces more and more criminal problems, Christie will gain.

For the second time, it should be noted, Pence has done something for the good of the nation.

October 30, 2023

Arguments commenced today in a Colorado suit on whether Trump's role in the January 2020 insurrection bars him from seeking office.

The Minnesota Supreme Court hears arguments on the same topic later this week.

If Trump loses either of these cases, this issue will be on its way to the Supreme Court, but perhaps not be heard until quite near the 2024 election.

Last prior edition:

The 2024 Election, Part VI. The 14th Amendment Edition.

Related threads:

Random snippets. Another thing that Biden will oddly not get any credit for.

Why should this even be allowed to occur?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday suspended Judge Pauline Newman, appointed to the bench in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, from hearing new cases.

The 96, yes 96, year old's behavior has been raising questions about her mental competence.

The bigger question is why we'd have a judicial system in which somebody who should have been forcibly retired 30 years ago is still on the bench.

The glory of being a trial lawyer.

The dirty little secret. . . there isn't any.

One of the nice things about being in a farm community as a working travelers is that their Sunday morning Masses usually start really early, as in 7:00 a.m. in this case.

At least not like portrayed in the movies, and certainly not like the silly "whaling for justice" type of stuff that the plaintiff's bar likes to shovel out.

Recently I tried a case out of town. I've tried so many in the past three decades I no longer have any idea how many I've tried, and if I stopped to try to count them, I know that I'd be inaccurate.  When you apply for a judicial appointment, which I've done several times, unsuccessfully (obviously), you are required to count them up, and I'm sure my numbers weren't the same any time I did that, even though I made an effort to be correct.

I do know that the year COVID restrictions on the courts lifted, I tried three that year.  That may not sound like a lot, but for a civil litigator it is.  I know quite a few civil litigators who have tried less than that over decades' long careers.  One law school colleague of mine who does the same work, has never, in so far as I know, tried a case.  An ABA review I once read of lawyers who had long civil careers and then retired (which seems to be a rarity) remarked that one of the subjects was proud of her "six" trials.

Six.

Hah.

There are a lot of reason there are not very many civil trials and even fewer serious civil trials, but one reason is that trials are hard stressful work.

But I'll get to that.

This past year, dating back a year ago or so, has not been a good one for me on a personal level.  I had surgery in the fall and missed the hunting season.  It was colon surgery, and I've never completely recovered, which is to say that my digestive track has not returned to normal, and it isn't going to.  During that process, it was revealed by a scan that I had a major thyroid nodule.  Followup on that showed it to almost certainly be cancerous, so during the trial, was looking forward to a second surgery, a partial thyroidectomy, and if really lucky I won't have to take medicine for the rest of my life.  There is, however, a good chance that I will have to. 

Having  the trial to accomplish meant that I didn't have to think about it, however.

In terms of good news, it turned out to be benign. Strange, but benign.  It's basically a result of an old injury, one I don't ever recall sustaining.

Current wound status.

Hopefully the recovery time isn't really long, but it varies quite a bit for people.  

I ended up never taking a day off from the second surgery, not even the day of the surgery, which was a mistake, I'll note.

Anyhow, for about a year running now, my life has been nothing but work.  As noted, I missed the hunting season and what little I got in prior to surgery was marred by being incredibly tired.  I'm not sure what was up with that (perhaps the thyroid), but I was.  I couldn't go for big game after that least I rip my stitches out.  

I did get out for waterfowl quite a bit late in the season, mostly on Sunday's after Mass.  I'd work on Sundays but for the Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, which I take seriously, although occasionally I find myself working on that day too.

That's mostly a reflection of my personality.

The trial in question had been from a pre COVID case and it finally rolled around to to.  Just before it did, my opponent let me know that his young female partner was leaving, and she did before the trial commenced.  I was stunned, really, as she was bailing out of a really good firm and she's a really good lawyer.  She was leaving private practice to go in house.  

No more trials for her.

Then my younger female partner let me know she was leaving. She stuck with me through the trial.

Finding a lawyer you can comfortably try cases with isn't easy.  Frankly, maybe one in ten lawyers who do trial work are really talented at it and of those, maybe only 10% anyone one person meshes with well enough to have that role.  But here she definitely did.  Her leaving is a big loss to me, just as my opponent's younger counsel leaving was a big loss to him.  I don't know, really, if I'll be able to replace her.

For some time I've frankly wondered how she does it, as she's married with young children.  When I was first practicing law, the female litigators I'd meet, and they were few, tended to be childless, often by choice.  Quite a few women started to come into the law about the time that I did, and by and large if they were married and started to have children, they dropped out of practice.  It was just too much of a burden.

This recalls the old phrase, supposedly written by Jean Little, a Canadian author:

A man can work from sun to sun, But a woman's work is never done.

There's a lot of truth to that, quite frankly.

For some reason, even in our "modern" age, the traditional division of labor in which women are burdened with raising children while they're young and keeping the household has never gone away, even when the woman of the house is a professional and its first breadwinner.  Perhaps its simply genetic, although we're not supposed to say that.  About the only relief I see them getting is from willing grandparents, really, and that too, oddly enough, is a very traditional role for grandparents.

Anyhow, juggling a household and having a professional job that requires long hours and travel. . . that's brutal.  I don't blame these women a bit for seeking something else out.

One more example of how our modern "you live to serve this ship" lifestyle makes no sense and makes nobody happy.

You always go to the location of the trial early.

On Sunday, I looked out of my hotel window and saw this:

Horses by an old homestead, still being farmed.

Sigh.

The only thing I got out to do was to go to Mass.

I like everyone to have their own vehicles at a trial.  It gives everyone some independence.  If I control things, and at my age I do, everyone drives themselves.  

This, I'll note, isn't the case with some lawyers, although it is with all the ones I know.  Those people must be the really extraverted ones who just think everyone needs lots of sharing time all the time, and therefore they make the whole team prisoners to their automobile.

Hotels have evolved quite a bit in the past thirty years.  Thirty years ago I'd look for a hotel with a restaurant and then catch breakfast.  Now, most hotels that I stay at are "business hotels" which means that they have a light kitchen with the bare minimum. As breakfast is an afterthought with me anyhow, I’m good to go with that.

I’m not good to go with these monstrosities:

I hate Keurig machines and their stupid one cup at a time system.  I always have.  I never drink just one cup of coffee bu several, and I don't want to screw around making endless little cups. To make matters worse, it's invariably the case that the person who stocks the rooms leaves you hardly any real coffee, but lots of stuff like Ceylonese Green Herbal Tea or something. 

Blech.

We always go down and get a bunch of real coffee for the stupid Keurig machine.

One thing about trials is you get to wear your cool dress shoes that otherwise would look odd in our modern era.

These are saddle oxfords.  Saddle oxfords made from buffalo hide, I might add.  

I've never worn out, I might note, a pair of dress shoes.  I have my black low quarters from basic training still.  When I was first practicing, I bought a pair of wingtips made in Ireland, just like the dress shoes my father had when I was young. They've been resoled once, but they're still in good shape.

Indeed, I only have five pairs of dress shoes, one being the aforementioned Army low quarters I very rarely wear.  I'm never going to need to buy another pair.

I do need to shine them.

Parking lot view.

One thing about doing a trial in farm country is that it always causes me to think how lucky some people are that they get to farm as a career.

I don't think they appreciate that.

I never think that about trying a case in a big city.  I've tried cases twice in Denver and wasn't envious of a soul associated with Denver. The poor judge looked like he'd been rode hard and put away wet in the second one. Denver itself, out on the street, was like a Middle Easter Dysentery Ward in the 30s.  The jurors had jobs I wouldn't have wanted.  

Grim.

In farm country you see, however, people living the way that people are supposed to live.

Restaurant view.  The field below is one I've hunted geese in.

I constantly hear people in agriculture complain about it, and by that I don't mean the weather or something, but about being in agriculture itself.  Maybe complaining is just something people do.  Pascal noted:

If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.

I'm not sure what Pascal was aiming at there, but I think it might have been that people just complain.  I also think, however, that a lot of people who were born into agriculture have no idea what other work is like, including working as a professional.   

I turned 60 recently as well, which of course is a sort of milestone for many people, although I really didn't pay that much attention to it at the time.  It really started to set in, however, when I attended a mule action by video. Everything was too expensive, and I didn't buy anything, but leading up to it, I got a fair amount of opposition from my spouse.  Most of it was of the nature of "you don't have time".

I don't have time, which is because I work a work schedule at the office, in this civil litigator line of country, that's very heavy.  I work a schedule that's heavier than a lot of lawyers in their 20s and 30s.  I have nobody, I guess, but myself to blame for that, sort of.  Part of it too has to do with the circumstances during which I came up in the law, and part of it has to do with my own character.

When I was young, before I was a lawyer, I wanted to work outdoors.

It's never really stopped being in a least the back of my mind.  The net effect of that is that from the exterior I'm one of the rare trial lawyers who tries a lot of cases.  I'm cited to other lawyers that way, and because of the work that comes through my door, it's pretty obvious that my reputation as a trial lawyer is impossible to escape.  But part of the reason that I can't escape it is that those immediately around me, including those closest to me, see me that way and can't imagine a world in which I'm not yoked to the plow in this fashion.

Elijah set out, and came upon Elisha, son of Shaphat, as he was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen; he was following the twelfth. Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak on him.

Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, “Please, let me kiss my father and mother good-bye, and I will follow you.” Elijah answered, “Go back! What have I done to you?”

Elisha left him and, taking the yoke of oxen, slaughtered them; he used the plowing equipment for fuel to boil their flesh, and gave it to the people to eat. Then he left and followed Elijah to serve him.

1 Kings, Chapter 19.

I've always thought Elisha's actions baffling.  But they are not.  He was wanting to set out with Elijah, who had just anointed him his successor.  When he left the oxen and spoke to Elijah, Elijah seemed annoyed and told him to go back.

Yoke's were expensive, and so were oxen.  By burning his wooden yokes, there was no going back.

If this seems harsh, consider the similar lines from Luke in the New Testament:

As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”

And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “[Lord,] let me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead.* But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”  Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” 

In modern American life we imagine we can always go back and most of us live our lives that way.  Had Elisha decided, well, I'll plow the field and bring in the crops and take up being a prophet later, he wouldn't have become a prophet.  Those setting a hand to the plow, and looking back, don't plow a straight row.

And so back to the main.

There's really no glory in trial work, in spite of what people like to imagine.  It's hard work.  If you win, your clients view the victory as theirs.  If you lose, it's your fault.  Everyone wins some and loses some, and moreover, wins some they should lose and lose some they should win.  It's so stressful that most civil litigators, truth be known, and this includes both plaintiffs and defendants lawyers, won't try a case.  Those who will tend to be a tiny minority, and we try lots of cases, because we will.  You get used to a lot of the things about it, but like the way Jock Lewes is portrayed in SAS, Rogue Heroes (stay tuned for a review shortly), some of that is suppression of anxiety rather than its elimination, although anxiety does indeed decrease with time.  People who run around claiming they love everything about a trial tend to be weirdos or liars, more often the latter than the former.

And, for what its worth, I've tried a minor case since this one.

Tuesday, July 31, 1923. Monitoring Harding

The nation was tracking President Hardin's health:

The Tribune was optimistic on that score.  And it was also anticipating the upcoming county rodeo.

Harding's speech planned for that day was delivered as a written statement.

The High Court of Justice in Ireland ruled that a state of war in that country was over and 13,000 prisoners were entitled to release. They were not, as the following day the Public Safety Act of 1923 was enacted, causing their ongoing internment.

Parliament passed the bill sponsored by Lady Astor prohibiting the sale of alcohol to anyone under 18 years of age.

Some random musings. Old Age, Worn Out Horses, Secrets.

The freeze

What happened to Mitch McConnell yesterday and to me 35 years ago.

ROBERT REICH

An insightful article by Robert Reich, who experienced something similar.

While I'm sure that I'm beating a dead horse on this, this is yet again evidence that we do come with a wear out date, and we ought to accordingly be careful.  So should society.  A huge amount of our societal deposit of power is in the truly ancient.

Mind you, I don't agree with Reich on much of McConnell's record being repugnant.  He did a great job, in my view, with the Supreme Court.  That's one of the things that Reich now doubt feels is skunking up the room.  And by this point, McConnell's presence may truly be necessary as a brake on what would occur if Donald Trump regains the White House, as McConnell seems to be able to control Senate Republicans, which in part has kept the Senate from becoming the circus that the House of Representatives currently is.

McConnell is 81.

Our senior Senator is 71.  Our junior Senator is 68.  Our Congressman is 60.

The world is enduring a really hot summer this year.  This is hard to ignore.

Sixteen young Montanans have sued their state for embracing fossil fuels in the face of climate change.  Nothing like that has happened in Wyoming.  I don't know what the average Wyomingite under 30 feels about this issue, or believes about it, but I'll bet it's not the same for Wyomingites who are 60 and over.  We probably worry about it, if we do, in the context of our children and their children.  Of course, if you are our youngest member of Congress, which isn't to say young, you have no children to worry about.

It used to be wars that caused this sort of observation.  Old men started them, it was claimed, and young men fought them.  Now it seems that really old men start them and young men and women, given that we've grown more barbarous in recent decades and included women in this horror, fight them.  The "old men" of the 1940s mostly weren't all that old, in comparison to what we have now.  Anyhow, I really wonder what approach to many things we'd be taking if people who were at least under 50 years of age were at the wheel.

Would that this was so.

On a somewhat related item, I've really been noticing recently that collapses that should be obvious to those close to collapsing aren't, at least to some extent.  I guess if people have relied upon somebody for a long time, they'll just ride that horse until it collapses, and then they're surprised.  Even the warnings that the metaphorical horse gives, as it stumbles or becomes blurry eyed, don't mean much.  The horse is just whipped into carrying on.  When it rolls over and dies, the rider is surprised.

I've been noticing recently that certain people turn everything very much to themselves.

Maybe everyone does to some degree.  People are told a story, and they want to show it's relevant to them as well, so they tell something related.

That's not really what I mean.

Rather, because for most of us our own frustrations and sufferings are the ones we really understand, it's hard for some not to use those as an absolute yardstick.

Indeed, I've witnessed recently somebody who fits into the category above, they're heavily burdened and collapsing, and they're pretty much trying to get some support.  However, when they seek to get it, they instead get tales, mostly repeats, of the other persons' frustrating, but not really epic, work life.  While it would be a poor comparison, it would be like a person going into the emergency room and telling the receptionist that they have a gunshot wound, only to get a really detailed reply like "I know, let me tell you about how slow the lunch line is here".

In this case, the suffering soul is pretty much the plow mule for the household, and the mule is on its last legs.  It's pretty obvious, but it must not actually be within the household, or they're so used to it, it goes unobserved.  But the signs are sure there.  The collapse is coming, and I don't know how to stop it.  Only the people driving the mule probably can, and they don't seem to believe it's going to happen.

Of course, it's really hard to appreciate that giants fall.  Some big tree grows in the forest, and It's always there.  It gets old, starts to die, and then one day a windstorm comes by and knocks it over.  People are surprised until they look at the photos of it when it was in its vigor.

Some people are horrible about keeping secrets.

I don't mean that they can't keep them, I mean that they love secretes too much.

There are things in the world that need to be kept secret.  Some occupations have secret keeping as a feature of their nature, such as doctors, priests, and lawyers.

But other people just adore secrets. They make secret information solely for the sake of making it secret.

My long-suffering spouse is one of these people.  She loves secrets.

I was reminded of this recently as I have a medical procedure coming up.  It's not a secret, why would it be?  But she was keeping it a secret from her family. That's really nifty, of course, for me as I don't keep stuff like this secret at all, and I don't have any concept why a person would do that.  Of course, it caught up with me when I was texting to my father-in-law, as he was at a cattle sale.  I mentioned it as I thought he knew.  My mother-in-law was calling in an instant, to my wife.

Why was this a secret?

I don't know, but that was bullshit, and I have repeatedly told my wife that I hate this "this is a secret" crap.  It's so ingrained in her character, however, that it's impossible to break.  Minor routine information is secret to outside parties.

This is aided by the fact, however, that she's good at keeping secrets, a fact that's further aided by her being bad at conveying necessary information.  I'll often get really important news about somebody weeks after it's conveyed to her.

"Bob is dying of the Grip", I'll learn. Oh, when did we learn this?  Weeks ago.

Or, "don't forget, this weekend we're hauling cattle".  Eh?  I've already committed myself to working this weekend, when did you learn this?  Yeah, weeks ago.  "I forgot to tell you".

On the other side, I guess, I've come to absolutely detest secrets.  Only things that legitimately need to be kept secret.  I guess having lived a life of professionally keeping secrets, while watching lots of people keep stuff they shouldn't keep secret until it blows up in their face, has made me detest them.   

Oh, well.

Oh good! A new court panic.

Having failed to rule in favor of the goofball independent state legislature theory, or take away the rights of Native Americans in regard to the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the public basically agreeing with the end of racial bias in college admission, you might wonder what terrible angst inducing, "it ain't going to happen" thing left wing court watchers can now wring their hands over.

Well, have no fear!

Robert Reich

@RBReich

·

45m

SCOTUS just took up a case that could preemptively ban a wealth tax. The lawsuit appears to have been filed with the explicit purpose of outlawing a wealth tax before Dems can enact one. They're trying to torpedo one of our only remaining tools to combat raging inequality.

The Court isn't going to "preemptively ban a wealth tax".

It's crap like this that makes the left look just as goofball as the far right.