I'm set to go back to work part-time. It's where I worked a few years ago--the Maryland Crime Victims' Resource Center. This time, I'm going to represent crime victims in administrative hearings and appeals to the courts. I was given the chance to attend a three-day training course offered to new Legal Aid attorneys by Maryland Legal Aid in Marriottsville, Maryland.
I opted in and attended, mainly because I've not been in a courtroom as a practitioner in a long time. It was both useful and fun--I got to hear some good, practical lecturers, mostly on evidence, and to make opening and closing statements, get documents admitted and an expert qualified, and conduct both direct and cross. The critiques--mostly by senior Legal Aid lawyers--were helpful and knowledgeable.
I likely was the oldest "new attorney" in attendance but that did not either bother me or make any difference. I was there to learn skills just like any other lawyer who hasn't been in the courts to try cases--in a long time, for me. One case was landlord-tenant and the other was child custody. They had been using the first for years and just made up the second.
To me, the best lecturer was a long-time practitioner who now runs a bar review. He might have been the only person there--and that includes all the other lecturers and senior staff who were the judges--older than me. He was highly pragmatic and urged us to just keep using the techniques he described because then they would become second nature.
Some have asked why I'm going back to work--even part-time. I'm not at all bored with what I'm doing now. I won't be getting enough money for it to make a major difference. So I don't have a good answer: it's probably because it seems like it could be both satisfying and useful--and also fun.
Saturday, September 15, 2018
Sunday, September 9, 2018
'The Wife' and 'Crazy Rich Asians'
Two new movies: The Wife is based on one of Meg Wolitzer's early novels--her penultimate one, The Interestings, was very good. She writes wonderfully and in Glenn Close, her leading character was played perfectly.
Jonathan Pryce is also excellent as the supremely egotistical husband: I did not see him in the original Miss Saigon but I do recall his initial appearance on Broadway in Trevor Griffiths's play, Comedians, in which he plays a young British comedian with a totally different style. The promoter auditioning the comics discerns how good the young comic will be even though he realizes that his shtick is unlikely to succeed at first and in the provinces.
Close does deserve awards here and should get them even though I am skeptical of so-called sympathy votes. She should win this time on the merits. Her role requires her maintaining a closed exterior and as some reviews have noted, the movie does not include her witty lines in the novel as narrator.
Crazy Rich Asians is a fun picture, not to be taken too seriously but enjoyed. It's yet another example in our times of identity culture of a story that makes fun of its ethnic group but is seen as acceptable because the producers, cast, and crew are all member of the group. This does not take away from the picture's being well-made and clever.
Jonathan Pryce is also excellent as the supremely egotistical husband: I did not see him in the original Miss Saigon but I do recall his initial appearance on Broadway in Trevor Griffiths's play, Comedians, in which he plays a young British comedian with a totally different style. The promoter auditioning the comics discerns how good the young comic will be even though he realizes that his shtick is unlikely to succeed at first and in the provinces.
Close does deserve awards here and should get them even though I am skeptical of so-called sympathy votes. She should win this time on the merits. Her role requires her maintaining a closed exterior and as some reviews have noted, the movie does not include her witty lines in the novel as narrator.
Crazy Rich Asians is a fun picture, not to be taken too seriously but enjoyed. It's yet another example in our times of identity culture of a story that makes fun of its ethnic group but is seen as acceptable because the producers, cast, and crew are all member of the group. This does not take away from the picture's being well-made and clever.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Retracing the Broadway Limited--Part II
So the link that demanded some scrutiny was between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The Broadway Limited continued after Pittsburgh on the Pennsy Main Line and around Alliance, Ohio, which happens to be the only stop now between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, it headed west through Lima, Ohio, and on to Chicago. The train (Capitol Limited) now joins this Main Line eastward bound near Alliance, apparently on a Pennsy line that went to Cleveland and ended there. This whole segment was transited in the middle of the night so it was impossible to discern stations along the way that might have helped resolve the matter (I also was asleep a good deal of the time once we left Cleveland).
The first part of the trip resembled all train journeys from Chicago: leave Union Station to the south--the exceptions are northward-bound trains like the Empire Builder, headed for Minneapolis on the way to Portland and Seattle--and pass through the South Side, including a sweep past Guaranteed Rate Stadium, formerly White Sox Park, which replaced ancient Comiskey Park. I had been part of the 15,000 or so who watched the Sox rally to top the Twins--both mediocre American League clubs--the previous day.
Then we passed Lake Michigan on the left as the train sailed through Indiana, stopping at South Bend and then Elkhart before reaching Waterloo, which is now the station serving Ft. Wayne. Ft. Wayne was a station on the original Broadway Limited line, although the train did not stop there. Having enjoyed the prepackaged short ribs, I slept past Toledo and woke up as we edged into Cleveland, or a station that looked to be both new and nowhere near downtown. I can sleep on trains but this train slowed often, sometimes to let freights pass.
Arriving in Pittsburgh before daybreak, I had a two-hour layover before boarding the Pennsylvanian, the only other train that serves Pittsburgh. The platforms look ancient but the station is one of those newer Amtrak facilities designed for places with few trains. As we filed down the platform to the station, I passed a train on the facing track which, much to my surprise, the station agent--a gregarious, pleasant woman--told me was indeed the Pennsylvanian.
Two hours later we were on our way again, quite a few passengers having sat out the two-hour spell with me. Western Pennsylvania is rocky and mountainous, providing plenty of charming scenery. Greensburg is the first stop, about 40 minutes out, and has a wonderful old Pennsy station complete with clock tower. For a small town, it had a large building a block or so from the tracks that looked like a major hotel.
Next stop was Johnstown and you can see the mountains on both sides, where high up on one was the infamous dam built by the one-percenters of those days for their recreation. When it burst, that was the Johnstown Flood. Then on to Altoona, where the Pennsylvania Railroad had its major shops. Just before you come down into the foothills of the Alleghenies, we traversed the famous Horseshoe Curve, an engineering marvel built in 1854 and at its centre is a park where several visitors armed with cameras captured our eastbound train, one of two to pass by there daily. The Broadway did stop in Altoona (Harrisburg was its only other stop between Philly and Pittsburgh), probably to pick up another added engine going westbound up the Appalachian slopes.
We moved slowly into Harrisburg, coming down from Lewiston, then and now the closest stop to Penn State (not all that close). The line reaches the Susquehanna some miles above the state capital, then crosses the wide, island-filled, non-navigable river on a low bridge just before Harrisburg. In the old days the train must have used the now-abandoned multi-arched bridge right at Harrisburg. :Leaving Harrisburg--we lost some time getting through a work area before that stop--we continued downriver, almost to Three Mile Island, and could see its now-familiar three smokestacks.
The train moved smoothly now through neat Pennsylvania Dutch farmland to Lancaster. Eventually we reached what still is called the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, beginning at Paoli, where we stopped. Then we passed multiple suburban stops until passing the last one, Overbrook, its high school perhaps Philly's most famous incubator of basketball players. 30th Street Station is actually the newest of the grand old stations with hundred-foot high plastered ceilings. The men's room was the scene of a tense encounter in the film Witness and you can get a decent cheesesteak and other good comestibles in the station, where I had another two-hour layover.
Had I remained on the Capitol Limited, I'd have arrived in Washington around 1 P.M. Now Amtrak was demanding a king's ransom to switch me onto one of the earlier trains I could've taken, so I enjoyed the always hard-hitting sports columnists of the Philadelphia Daily News, who couldn't decide whether they were more unhappy about the defending Super Bowl champ Eagles losing a preseason game to the Browns, possibly the NFL's worst team, or the Phillies for losing another. Since they remained six games ahead of the Nats, I figured they had little to complain about, but that's Philly sportswriters for you.
At last I boarded the train to Washington, which was amazingly on time and efficient, while also mostly empty since this was late on a summer Friday afternoon. It did improve my disposition by actually arriving in Union Station ten minutes early. The trip lived up to my expectations, especially, as anticipated, the classic section of the Broadway Limited route, now traversed from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia by the Pennsylvanian. The victuals served by its cafe car were well above average.
The first part of the trip resembled all train journeys from Chicago: leave Union Station to the south--the exceptions are northward-bound trains like the Empire Builder, headed for Minneapolis on the way to Portland and Seattle--and pass through the South Side, including a sweep past Guaranteed Rate Stadium, formerly White Sox Park, which replaced ancient Comiskey Park. I had been part of the 15,000 or so who watched the Sox rally to top the Twins--both mediocre American League clubs--the previous day.
Then we passed Lake Michigan on the left as the train sailed through Indiana, stopping at South Bend and then Elkhart before reaching Waterloo, which is now the station serving Ft. Wayne. Ft. Wayne was a station on the original Broadway Limited line, although the train did not stop there. Having enjoyed the prepackaged short ribs, I slept past Toledo and woke up as we edged into Cleveland, or a station that looked to be both new and nowhere near downtown. I can sleep on trains but this train slowed often, sometimes to let freights pass.
Arriving in Pittsburgh before daybreak, I had a two-hour layover before boarding the Pennsylvanian, the only other train that serves Pittsburgh. The platforms look ancient but the station is one of those newer Amtrak facilities designed for places with few trains. As we filed down the platform to the station, I passed a train on the facing track which, much to my surprise, the station agent--a gregarious, pleasant woman--told me was indeed the Pennsylvanian.
Two hours later we were on our way again, quite a few passengers having sat out the two-hour spell with me. Western Pennsylvania is rocky and mountainous, providing plenty of charming scenery. Greensburg is the first stop, about 40 minutes out, and has a wonderful old Pennsy station complete with clock tower. For a small town, it had a large building a block or so from the tracks that looked like a major hotel.
Next stop was Johnstown and you can see the mountains on both sides, where high up on one was the infamous dam built by the one-percenters of those days for their recreation. When it burst, that was the Johnstown Flood. Then on to Altoona, where the Pennsylvania Railroad had its major shops. Just before you come down into the foothills of the Alleghenies, we traversed the famous Horseshoe Curve, an engineering marvel built in 1854 and at its centre is a park where several visitors armed with cameras captured our eastbound train, one of two to pass by there daily. The Broadway did stop in Altoona (Harrisburg was its only other stop between Philly and Pittsburgh), probably to pick up another added engine going westbound up the Appalachian slopes.
We moved slowly into Harrisburg, coming down from Lewiston, then and now the closest stop to Penn State (not all that close). The line reaches the Susquehanna some miles above the state capital, then crosses the wide, island-filled, non-navigable river on a low bridge just before Harrisburg. In the old days the train must have used the now-abandoned multi-arched bridge right at Harrisburg. :Leaving Harrisburg--we lost some time getting through a work area before that stop--we continued downriver, almost to Three Mile Island, and could see its now-familiar three smokestacks.
The train moved smoothly now through neat Pennsylvania Dutch farmland to Lancaster. Eventually we reached what still is called the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, beginning at Paoli, where we stopped. Then we passed multiple suburban stops until passing the last one, Overbrook, its high school perhaps Philly's most famous incubator of basketball players. 30th Street Station is actually the newest of the grand old stations with hundred-foot high plastered ceilings. The men's room was the scene of a tense encounter in the film Witness and you can get a decent cheesesteak and other good comestibles in the station, where I had another two-hour layover.
Had I remained on the Capitol Limited, I'd have arrived in Washington around 1 P.M. Now Amtrak was demanding a king's ransom to switch me onto one of the earlier trains I could've taken, so I enjoyed the always hard-hitting sports columnists of the Philadelphia Daily News, who couldn't decide whether they were more unhappy about the defending Super Bowl champ Eagles losing a preseason game to the Browns, possibly the NFL's worst team, or the Phillies for losing another. Since they remained six games ahead of the Nats, I figured they had little to complain about, but that's Philly sportswriters for you.
At last I boarded the train to Washington, which was amazingly on time and efficient, while also mostly empty since this was late on a summer Friday afternoon. It did improve my disposition by actually arriving in Union Station ten minutes early. The trip lived up to my expectations, especially, as anticipated, the classic section of the Broadway Limited route, now traversed from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia by the Pennsylvanian. The victuals served by its cafe car were well above average.
Retracing the Broadway Limited--Part I
Coming back from attending a conference in Chicago with Eileen, I opted to make the trip by train. She took the plane and arrived, of course, within hours. Not only did I arrange to travel on Amtrak but I included some connections to make the trip more interesting, although longer. (Eileen is willing to join me on rail for journeys no longer than one day and one night; this trip did meet that standard, if barely, since I departed Union Station, Chicago, at 6:40 P.M. and arrived at Union Station, D.C., at 7:40 P.M. the next day. There was precedent for her flying: when we were in the U.K. for almost a year, I traveled from London to Edinburgh on the famed Flying Scotsman, then a crack day train--Newcastle was the only intermediate stop--run by British Rail. She chose instead to go on the Flying Scotsman that flew.)
I started out on the Capitol Limited, Amtrak's fastest train between Chicago and Washington. There are two slower ways: the Lake Shore Limited, via the old New York Central "Water-Level" Route through Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, down the Hudson to New York, and then down the Northeast Corridor to Washington; and the Cardinal, through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Charleston, White Sulphur Springs and Clifton Forge (for the Greenbrier and Homestead, respectively), Charlottesville, and Washington.
Having already ridden the Cardinal, which offers wonderful scenery in West Virginia especially, which would not be otherwise viewable except by hiking, but which is now one of Amtrak's smaller trains, with a tiny hard-pressed staff serving a sleeping car and combined diner-lounge. It now looks more attractive, because Amtrak is experimenting on the Capitol and Lake Shore Limiteds with prepackaged meals--the dinner was surprisingly good but I was at my first transfer point before it was time for what looked on the menu to be a rather uninspiring breakfast.
Instead, I was aiming to retrace the route of the Pennsylvania Railroad's one-time crack express between New York and Chicago--the Broadway Limited, the Pennsy's competitor to the New York Central's 20th Century Limited. Amtrak has chosen not to run the Broadway but does operate a day train between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia called the Pennsylvanian. My plan was to start on the Capitol Limited, change to the Pennsylvanian at Pittsburgh, and then board a Northeast Regional train at Philadelphia.
Both the Broadway and 20th Century Limiteds were exclusive, sleepers-only trains, with no coaches and no checked baggage. The Capitol Limited, which was one of the Baltimore & Ohio's top trains, was in that class, too, running from Baltimore to Washington, and thence west to Pittsburgh and Chicago. The Broadway listed its consist as a lounge car, at least ten sleepers, an observation car, and a diner.
Since the Broadway Limited route no longer functions in its entirety, I had to improvise as noted. But the first part of the Capitol Limited route actually uses the old 20th Century Limited (N.Y. Central) route from Chicago to Cleveland. From Pittsburgh, of course, the old Broadway route across Pennsylvania is the same as it was in the glory days. Coming into Philly, the train does head for 30th St. Station, while the Broadway turned north at the junction with what is now the Northeast Corridor (N.Y. to D.C.) route and headed to New York (Penn Station, naturally) only stopping at North Philadelphia in the Quaker City. (This is likely why Amtrak conductors for years would announce stops at 30th St. with the add-on "This is the only station stop in Philadelphia" because some trains turned west before reaching 30th St. but did stop at North Philadelphia, which comes before the turn-off.)
I started out on the Capitol Limited, Amtrak's fastest train between Chicago and Washington. There are two slower ways: the Lake Shore Limited, via the old New York Central "Water-Level" Route through Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, down the Hudson to New York, and then down the Northeast Corridor to Washington; and the Cardinal, through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Charleston, White Sulphur Springs and Clifton Forge (for the Greenbrier and Homestead, respectively), Charlottesville, and Washington.
Having already ridden the Cardinal, which offers wonderful scenery in West Virginia especially, which would not be otherwise viewable except by hiking, but which is now one of Amtrak's smaller trains, with a tiny hard-pressed staff serving a sleeping car and combined diner-lounge. It now looks more attractive, because Amtrak is experimenting on the Capitol and Lake Shore Limiteds with prepackaged meals--the dinner was surprisingly good but I was at my first transfer point before it was time for what looked on the menu to be a rather uninspiring breakfast.
Instead, I was aiming to retrace the route of the Pennsylvania Railroad's one-time crack express between New York and Chicago--the Broadway Limited, the Pennsy's competitor to the New York Central's 20th Century Limited. Amtrak has chosen not to run the Broadway but does operate a day train between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia called the Pennsylvanian. My plan was to start on the Capitol Limited, change to the Pennsylvanian at Pittsburgh, and then board a Northeast Regional train at Philadelphia.
Both the Broadway and 20th Century Limiteds were exclusive, sleepers-only trains, with no coaches and no checked baggage. The Capitol Limited, which was one of the Baltimore & Ohio's top trains, was in that class, too, running from Baltimore to Washington, and thence west to Pittsburgh and Chicago. The Broadway listed its consist as a lounge car, at least ten sleepers, an observation car, and a diner.
Since the Broadway Limited route no longer functions in its entirety, I had to improvise as noted. But the first part of the Capitol Limited route actually uses the old 20th Century Limited (N.Y. Central) route from Chicago to Cleveland. From Pittsburgh, of course, the old Broadway route across Pennsylvania is the same as it was in the glory days. Coming into Philly, the train does head for 30th St. Station, while the Broadway turned north at the junction with what is now the Northeast Corridor (N.Y. to D.C.) route and headed to New York (Penn Station, naturally) only stopping at North Philadelphia in the Quaker City. (This is likely why Amtrak conductors for years would announce stops at 30th St. with the add-on "This is the only station stop in Philadelphia" because some trains turned west before reaching 30th St. but did stop at North Philadelphia, which comes before the turn-off.)
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Hockey Repeats NFL Disgrace
Ken Dryden laid it all out in an op-ed last week in the Washington Post. He listed the "enforcers" in the National Hockey League--the tough guys, usually defensemen--who died premature deaths owing to what was diagnosed after their passing as CTE, a neurological degenerative disease. The league, led by its commissioner, Gary Bettman, denies any connection between the slamming of players into the boards and hard falls, much less the fights that sometimes make you think this is where boxing has regenerated, and this brain disease that has been identified in the NFL as causing early deaths.
Dryden has been a Canadian cabinet minister, member of parliament, and Hockey Hall of Fame member, after his storied career as a multi-year Stanley Cup winner as the star goalie of the Montreal Canadiens. Before that, I saw him play as Cornell's goalie on the 1967 NCAA championship team. Known at the Big Red as "the Big Kid," his height and size helped make one of the all-time great stars tending goal.
His calling out the disgraceful denial by the hockey league stands in contrast to another Cornell alumnus, indeed a graduate of the same N.Y. State School of Industrial and Labor Relations there from which I graduated, the aforementioned commissioner of the NHL, one Gary Bettman. This mouthpiece for the hockey owners previously attracted attention for utilizing his knowledge of labor relations to engineer a lockout at the NHL a few years ago.
The owners cynically abandoned that season to beat down the players' efforts to win the compensation they deserve. Whenever I hear someone argue that the players, who are the ones who perform on the field and without whom there would be no game, much less a league, receive too much money, apparently in comparison with the owners, who glom a whole lot more, I recall one marvelous summation of the situation: "Who ever paid for an admission ticket to see an owner?"
The players are the ones who have shortened careers in their sports, especially because of the physical injury suffered so often by those in hockey and football, as well as shortened lives. The NFL is being dragged kicking and screaming into doing something about the frequency of players dying owing to CTE. The process of bringing both leagues into some sort of recognition and compensation for this tragedy will not be pretty but it is critical that it proceed--in the NHL through a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.
Those who bemoan the likelihood that the games will have to change should consider the advice to his nephew from the Count, the title character in Giuseppe de Lampedusa's classic, The Leopard: "For things to stay the same, things will have to change."
Dryden has been a Canadian cabinet minister, member of parliament, and Hockey Hall of Fame member, after his storied career as a multi-year Stanley Cup winner as the star goalie of the Montreal Canadiens. Before that, I saw him play as Cornell's goalie on the 1967 NCAA championship team. Known at the Big Red as "the Big Kid," his height and size helped make one of the all-time great stars tending goal.
His calling out the disgraceful denial by the hockey league stands in contrast to another Cornell alumnus, indeed a graduate of the same N.Y. State School of Industrial and Labor Relations there from which I graduated, the aforementioned commissioner of the NHL, one Gary Bettman. This mouthpiece for the hockey owners previously attracted attention for utilizing his knowledge of labor relations to engineer a lockout at the NHL a few years ago.
The owners cynically abandoned that season to beat down the players' efforts to win the compensation they deserve. Whenever I hear someone argue that the players, who are the ones who perform on the field and without whom there would be no game, much less a league, receive too much money, apparently in comparison with the owners, who glom a whole lot more, I recall one marvelous summation of the situation: "Who ever paid for an admission ticket to see an owner?"
The players are the ones who have shortened careers in their sports, especially because of the physical injury suffered so often by those in hockey and football, as well as shortened lives. The NFL is being dragged kicking and screaming into doing something about the frequency of players dying owing to CTE. The process of bringing both leagues into some sort of recognition and compensation for this tragedy will not be pretty but it is critical that it proceed--in the NHL through a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.
Those who bemoan the likelihood that the games will have to change should consider the advice to his nephew from the Count, the title character in Giuseppe de Lampedusa's classic, The Leopard: "For things to stay the same, things will have to change."
Thursday, June 28, 2018
The Republican Kennedy
We may get a worse Supreme Court justice than Anthony Kennedy was. He wasn't a zealot and he seemed to have acquired a healthy attitude toward gay marriage, possibly from his clerks, and resisted the efforts to get rid of Roe v. Wade. That's about it for the positives. He was responsible for Citizens United and all the wretched reactionary decisions we have seen come down in the past week.
Kennedy was a privileged man from old-time northern California so he never had a need for a union and as a result, distrusted and probably despised them. He signed on to John Roberts's disgraceful conclusion that the Southern states and others which had discriminated against African Americans had changed their ways so we didn't need voting rights clearance of their repressive steps to disenfranchise minority citizens.
Kennedy's Supreme Court, on which he was the only remaining occasional swing vote, also has been perfectly happy to let the Republicans do everything they can to make it harder for people to vote. As a conservative, he's a bit like Potter Stewart, who was also quite conservative, but not a brilliant nut case like Scalia or a sleazebag like Thomas.
It's taken all these years and the #metoo movement to demonstrate that Anita Hill was telling the truth and that the defenders of Thomas, including himself and his outrageous wife who demands apologies from those who insisted on not forgetting his fraud, and that includes the holier-than-thou former minister, Sen. John Danforth of Missouri. Some of us still hold Joe Biden responsible because he let the Republicans run rings around him. I tend to let him off because he's done a lot of good since then.
The Supreme Court is not exactly a great aggregation of legal stars. Most revert to their political backgrounds, as O'Connor and now Kennedy have done, making sure a Republican president gets to replace them. Alito made it through confirmation with the help of some misguided colleagues on the Third Circuit who broke judicial impartiality by testifying for him, led by a nasty little man named Ed Becker. Of course, Gorsuch has been forced on us by the hypocrite Mitch McConnell and is just a down-the-line right winger like his mother, who stood out as an extremist in Reagan's day.
I can't say we have a lot of greatness on the other side either. Most of them are far from being true liberals. They seem progressive only in comparison with the five reactionaries. It seems like we have Van Devanter, Butler, Sutherland, and McReynolds there insofar as the right-wingers are concerned. But we lack the truly progressive and impressive minds of Douglas, Rutledge, Stone, Brandeis, and yes, Earl Warren, who showed you could be a Republican and care about this country, pace Lincoln, and who himself grew as his career moved forward, or Robert H. Jackson, the lawyers' lawyer and justice, who was a conservative Democrat.
Kennedy was a privileged man from old-time northern California so he never had a need for a union and as a result, distrusted and probably despised them. He signed on to John Roberts's disgraceful conclusion that the Southern states and others which had discriminated against African Americans had changed their ways so we didn't need voting rights clearance of their repressive steps to disenfranchise minority citizens.
Kennedy's Supreme Court, on which he was the only remaining occasional swing vote, also has been perfectly happy to let the Republicans do everything they can to make it harder for people to vote. As a conservative, he's a bit like Potter Stewart, who was also quite conservative, but not a brilliant nut case like Scalia or a sleazebag like Thomas.
It's taken all these years and the #metoo movement to demonstrate that Anita Hill was telling the truth and that the defenders of Thomas, including himself and his outrageous wife who demands apologies from those who insisted on not forgetting his fraud, and that includes the holier-than-thou former minister, Sen. John Danforth of Missouri. Some of us still hold Joe Biden responsible because he let the Republicans run rings around him. I tend to let him off because he's done a lot of good since then.
The Supreme Court is not exactly a great aggregation of legal stars. Most revert to their political backgrounds, as O'Connor and now Kennedy have done, making sure a Republican president gets to replace them. Alito made it through confirmation with the help of some misguided colleagues on the Third Circuit who broke judicial impartiality by testifying for him, led by a nasty little man named Ed Becker. Of course, Gorsuch has been forced on us by the hypocrite Mitch McConnell and is just a down-the-line right winger like his mother, who stood out as an extremist in Reagan's day.
I can't say we have a lot of greatness on the other side either. Most of them are far from being true liberals. They seem progressive only in comparison with the five reactionaries. It seems like we have Van Devanter, Butler, Sutherland, and McReynolds there insofar as the right-wingers are concerned. But we lack the truly progressive and impressive minds of Douglas, Rutledge, Stone, Brandeis, and yes, Earl Warren, who showed you could be a Republican and care about this country, pace Lincoln, and who himself grew as his career moved forward, or Robert H. Jackson, the lawyers' lawyer and justice, who was a conservative Democrat.
Friday, June 8, 2018
'Book Club' and 'R.B.G.'
Two movies we happened to catch lately provided good entertainment and RBG was a very worthwhile experience. Book Club features four actresses d'une certaine age, viz., Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Mary Steenbergen, and the male component isn't bad either: Craig T. Nelson, Ed Begley Jr., Richard Dreyfuss, among them. Not a very great plot and not very well written, but the women are delightful to watch, and I didn't find myself checking my watch.
R.B.G. presents the life story, more or less, of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It's definitely well done. We see her from her Brooklyn origins, her school days at Cornell and Harvard Law, two places I have some familiarity with, and then her legal career and her ultimate appointment to the high court by Bill Clinton. Next time you're tempted to accept some derogatory remark about Bill, remember his Supreme Court appoiitnments compared with what we got from Bush II and the present incumbent.
The filmmakers gathered material from a lot of sources and they assembled it skillfully. This kind of documentary can drag but this one doesn't. I'm not sure the Justice is that fascinating in her own right but the picture presents her in a highly attractive and enjoyable manner. It also focuses on the major cases--both those she argued as a women's rights advocate and those she decided as a justice.
It cleverly presents Supreme Court arguments, which is a challenge, since they are not videotaped or otherwise recorded visually. This is the first film or TV show I've seen that actually shows you the Supreme Court courtroom as it really is, and then runs the soundtrack over those shots. The picture leaves you not only a fan of RBG's if you weren't already, but offers a fine picture of her entire career to support the highly positive image it provides.
One note on the always-mentioned surprising friendship between Justices Ginsburg and Scalia: I heard them both speak at a D.C. Circuit Judicial Conference some years ago. Both had served as judges on the circuit. Scalia was already on the Supreme Court. Both followed the standard practice of both justices and judges until quite recently: neither talk contained any content that related to pending cases, or any matter of current or past public interest. Scalia focused on one of his favorite topics: language. Ginsburg had been the chair of the conference and she spent most of her talk thanking her husband and "life partner," Martin, for his support.
Rather than feeling totally disappointed by the lack of content in these remarks, as I was then, I now appreciate that it was a really good idea for judges to stay out of involvement in current issues and controversies. It's better for them to bore you than to sacrifice at least their appearance of disinterestedness.
R.B.G. presents the life story, more or less, of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It's definitely well done. We see her from her Brooklyn origins, her school days at Cornell and Harvard Law, two places I have some familiarity with, and then her legal career and her ultimate appointment to the high court by Bill Clinton. Next time you're tempted to accept some derogatory remark about Bill, remember his Supreme Court appoiitnments compared with what we got from Bush II and the present incumbent.
The filmmakers gathered material from a lot of sources and they assembled it skillfully. This kind of documentary can drag but this one doesn't. I'm not sure the Justice is that fascinating in her own right but the picture presents her in a highly attractive and enjoyable manner. It also focuses on the major cases--both those she argued as a women's rights advocate and those she decided as a justice.
It cleverly presents Supreme Court arguments, which is a challenge, since they are not videotaped or otherwise recorded visually. This is the first film or TV show I've seen that actually shows you the Supreme Court courtroom as it really is, and then runs the soundtrack over those shots. The picture leaves you not only a fan of RBG's if you weren't already, but offers a fine picture of her entire career to support the highly positive image it provides.
One note on the always-mentioned surprising friendship between Justices Ginsburg and Scalia: I heard them both speak at a D.C. Circuit Judicial Conference some years ago. Both had served as judges on the circuit. Scalia was already on the Supreme Court. Both followed the standard practice of both justices and judges until quite recently: neither talk contained any content that related to pending cases, or any matter of current or past public interest. Scalia focused on one of his favorite topics: language. Ginsburg had been the chair of the conference and she spent most of her talk thanking her husband and "life partner," Martin, for his support.
Rather than feeling totally disappointed by the lack of content in these remarks, as I was then, I now appreciate that it was a really good idea for judges to stay out of involvement in current issues and controversies. It's better for them to bore you than to sacrifice at least their appearance of disinterestedness.
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