Presidents’ Day: America, the Ruled!

February 18, 2019

Presidents’ Day: America, the Ruled!

presidents day

President Donald Trump

Happy Presidents’ Day. Not so much in Tucson / Pima County. Here, we let the kiddies out of school to celebrate the rodeo later this week. A Tucson thing! And, although with closed courts Rubin & Bernstein shuttered its office, LB and I worked and encountered plenty of professional offices, open for business and fully staffed. (Staff: no rodeo days for you, and we need to examine holiday policies.)

I heard a fine discussion about presidential power on the NewsHour this evening. Is expanding presidential power inherently bad for democracy was up for discussion. The answer, from historians Douglas Brinkley and Andrew Rudalevige? Probably.

We have elected 43 men to lead

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Abraham Lincoln on Law

May 30, 2016

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War (five years ago), Memorial Day (which tracks back to Decoration Day, dedicated to honoring those who died in the Civil War) and the notion that Donald Trump might be our 45th President of the United States of America, brought to mind Abraham Lincoln. Before he went to work for the federal government in 1861, Mr. Lincoln was a very accomplished attorney. Notes for a Law Lecture, dated July 1, 1850, may or may not have been used in a lecture, but they have survived for more than 165 years.

Age aside, the Notes are worthy of attention for attorneys and non-attorneys, for Mr. Lincoln focuses on four major, timeless themes: 

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It’s Complicated

March 25, 2016

It’s complicated, this sh*t show we’re calling the 2016 Presidential Election for months! If we were all Jews we’d be calling this a shanda fur die goyim. For non-clickers, the term refers to doing something which, as a Jew, will embarrass all of us in front of non-Jews. It fits for Americans, too, and I wonder whether there’s any shame at all about how poorly we look in a world that looks up to us.

With that thought shared, I need to credit Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for crystalizing an issue that has been scattered in my mind for a while. (Everybody—he has very few supporters left—calm down; I’m not supporting my senator, it’s time for him to take

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