Riker truck being delivered to the U.S. Army, for use in the Punitive Expedition.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Implements of the transportation revolution: Riker Truck
Riker truck being delivered to the U.S. Army, for use in the Punitive Expedition.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Wednesday, February 18, 1914. Insuring Villa and The Tennessee Walz.
Pancho Villa insured his life for $500,000 as a favor of his wife. That was a huge sum at the time.
Pee Wee King, co-writer of the classic Tennessee Waltz, was born.
King died in 2000 at the age of 86.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Old Picture of the Day: Car Dealership
Old Picture of the Day: Car Dealership: We wrap up Denver Week with this picture of a Car Dealership. The picture was taken in about 1900. The dealership was for the Felken Cy...
Old Picture of the Day: Express Wagon
Old Picture of the Day: Express Wagon: Today's picture is from about 1870, and shows a great scene in Denver that could be right out of a Western. The picture shows an E...
Old Picture of the Day: Horse Trolley
Old Picture of the Day: Horse Trolley: Denver week continues with this peculiar picture from 1903 of a horse-drawn trolley. The unusual thing is that the horse is riding, no...
Old Picture of the Day: Denver Stockyards
Old Picture of the Day: Denver Stockyards: Today's picture shows Cattle Buyers at the Denver Stockyards. The picture was taken in 1939. These buyers would be buying for the p...
Old Picture of the Day: Denver Train Station
Old Picture of the Day: Denver Train Station: Today's picture shows a scene from the Denver train station. The picture was taken in 1903. People dressed in grand style back then...
Old Picture of the Day: Dallas Cowboy
Old Picture of the Day: Dallas Cowboy: Welcome to Dallas Texas Week here at OPOD. We will be looking at pictures from times gone by of this great city. We start with this pi...
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Friday, February 14, 1914. Concerned farmers.
Protesting Swedish peasants.
Concerned Swedish farmers gathered in the courtyard of Stockholm Place to demand higher defense spending. There were 32,000 of them. King Gustaf declared to them that he shared their concerns, violating the Swedish constitution by taking an issue in a partisan matter. Conservatives supported higher defense spending and had organized the protest against the sitting Liberal government. The resulting controversy resulted in the downfall of the leadership of the Swedish government and the appointment of a government approved of by the King.
Gustav was king from 1907 until his death in 1950. Up until World War One he still held significant power in the country, and was highly influential in the Swedish government during the war. After the war, parliamentary actions would end up stripping the crown of them. He was the last Swedish monarch to exercise royal prerogatives, and 1974 constitutional changes ended them.
Gustav was pro German and anti Communist during the war and after. During World War Two, he had to be stopped by the Swedish prime minister from sending a congratulatory letter to Hitler for invading the Soviet Union. He nonetheless on behalf of tennis Davis Cup stars Jean Borotra of France and his personal trainer and friend Baron Gottfried von Cramm of Germany for better treatment by the Nazis, the latter of which had been imprisoned on the charge of a homosexual relationship with a Jew. Gustav himself was an ardent tennis player.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Random Snippets: Toyota Pickup Trucks.
Has anyone else noticed that Toyota pickup trucks seem to be the prime mover of every third world irregular army on the planet?
Friday, February 14, 2014
ABA President Silkenat: America's legal response to gun violence is unacceptable
ABA President Silkenat: America's legal response to gun violence is unacceptable
Which shows just how far the ABA has strayed from its original mission, and how whopping irrelevant it now is to the lives of average lawyers.
The ABA started off as a (conservative) organization seeking to regulate the unrestricted practice of law. It was concerned that the rough and tumble nature of the practice, which had existed in its frontier regions from nearly day one, lead to be the law being regarded with disdain. It sought to elevate the practice, and actually to boost its esteem to the level of physicians. As part of that, it emphasized professionalism, and it came to also review Federal judicial nominees and rate law schools.
Well, just like other organizations, it's in decline. Part of this is for the same reasons fraternal organizations are in decline (see also the recent post on the Boy Scouts). Part of it is also for the reasons that labor unions are in decline. The ABA achieved what it sought to do many, many year ago. So it isn't really needed to achieve htat goal, only to maintain it.
But organizations that started off with a cause rarely disband when the cause is achieved. They just move on to a new one, and that's what the ABA has done. It's morphed from a conservative organization concerned with practice standards, to one which is now a liberal organization ready to espouse liberal causes.
The problem with that is that a political cause is a political cause, and most legal practitioners are working in the nuts and bolts of the law. Practitioners are more concerned with developments in tort law, criminal law, civil procedure, and the like. As for social causes, lawyers have their own views like everyone else. Some of those views are grounded in legal interpretation, some in social views, and some in emotion.
Hopefully lawyers involved in social causes, and more particularly legal organizations involved in them, do try to keep the law in mind, but here the ABA is frankly just out to lunch. A person can argue one way or another about gun control, but a legal organization that argues about it should keep the law in mind, and either accept it or argue that it, and by it we have to mean the Constitution here, be changed. It's weak legal reasoning to argue that a strained reading of the Constitution ought to be the approach taken.
Beyond that, frankly this is a policy issue that has nothing really to do with the law as law. Lawyers don't have much business saying "I'm a lawyer, and therefore I know that this should be the policy." And this has nothing to do with what almost every lawyer in the US actually does for a living.
Which shows just how far the ABA has strayed from its original mission, and how whopping irrelevant it now is to the lives of average lawyers.
The ABA started off as a (conservative) organization seeking to regulate the unrestricted practice of law. It was concerned that the rough and tumble nature of the practice, which had existed in its frontier regions from nearly day one, lead to be the law being regarded with disdain. It sought to elevate the practice, and actually to boost its esteem to the level of physicians. As part of that, it emphasized professionalism, and it came to also review Federal judicial nominees and rate law schools.
Well, just like other organizations, it's in decline. Part of this is for the same reasons fraternal organizations are in decline (see also the recent post on the Boy Scouts). Part of it is also for the reasons that labor unions are in decline. The ABA achieved what it sought to do many, many year ago. So it isn't really needed to achieve htat goal, only to maintain it.
But organizations that started off with a cause rarely disband when the cause is achieved. They just move on to a new one, and that's what the ABA has done. It's morphed from a conservative organization concerned with practice standards, to one which is now a liberal organization ready to espouse liberal causes.
The problem with that is that a political cause is a political cause, and most legal practitioners are working in the nuts and bolts of the law. Practitioners are more concerned with developments in tort law, criminal law, civil procedure, and the like. As for social causes, lawyers have their own views like everyone else. Some of those views are grounded in legal interpretation, some in social views, and some in emotion.
Hopefully lawyers involved in social causes, and more particularly legal organizations involved in them, do try to keep the law in mind, but here the ABA is frankly just out to lunch. A person can argue one way or another about gun control, but a legal organization that argues about it should keep the law in mind, and either accept it or argue that it, and by it we have to mean the Constitution here, be changed. It's weak legal reasoning to argue that a strained reading of the Constitution ought to be the approach taken.
Beyond that, frankly this is a policy issue that has nothing really to do with the law as law. Lawyers don't have much business saying "I'm a lawyer, and therefore I know that this should be the policy." And this has nothing to do with what almost every lawyer in the US actually does for a living.
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