No Government Shutdown … I think!

September 25, 2015

John Boehner Will Resign from Congress is today’s big story. This is big news, of course, although it’s not surprising news, at least to me. The third paragraph in the New York Times story sums up Speaker Boehner’s legacy very well:

The Ohio representative struggled from almost the moment he took the speaker’s gavel in 2011 to manage the challenges of divided government and to hold together his fractious and increasingly conservative Republican members.

So here are my predictions:  (1) There will be no government shutdown; and (2) we may see progress before October 30 on a number of issues that matter.

There will be no government shutdown. I’m more comfortable with this prediction. Speaker Boehner has observed, mostly,

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Stupid Lawsuits

April 20, 2015

Stupid lawsuits are sometimes just causes with which some people disagree. So, for example, there was Stella Liebeck v. McDonalds, the hot coffee/third degree burn case from 1992. The mainstream media thought a $2.9 million damage/punitive damage award for spilled coffee was absurd, while others—notably, plaintiffs’ personal injury associations—provided another perspective.

National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and King v. Burwell seemed like marginal cases when they were filed. Both ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court; the first almost destroyed the Affordable Care Act, and the second may do so still. So, with a healthy respect for how cases can turn out, I’m aware of three stupid lawsuits in the federal courts right now, wasting taxpayer

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