Cigars and smoke rings

While trying to identify the best title for today's Boulder Photo a Day posting, I went to onelook.com to use the thesaurus. I learned that "Today's word is phalic." Perhaps I was set up to be unable to pass this up by yesterday's article in the Daily Camera by Kate Becker, Trying to talk about Uranus like adults. (For those too short of attention to read the article, the short version is that she failed.)

Fen-Pen

You may remember that a group of Kentucky lawyers are in trouble for allegedly diverting millions of dollars from a fen-phen class action lawsuit into their own pockets. Yesterday that case took a fascinating twist when judge gave the lawyers in question a choice: stop asking for delays or spend the intervening time in jail. This event is viscerally very satisfying, and if these lawyers did screw their clients out of millions of dollars, I hope they spend the full 20 years in prison. But by putting these very rich white men in the position more often faced by very poor black men, a deep problem with our legal system is highlighted: when your options are to either waive your rights to a fair trial or to sit in jail before that trial, where is the justice?

In this specific case, the judge has basically abdicated his responsibility to make a determination. Bertelsman needs to decide either that the defendants are gaming the system and need to stop, or that in order for them to get a fair trial they require the time they have requested. To leverage them in to giving up their rights is not ethical, not appropriate, and unjust.

But much greater injustices are faced in less notable cases every day. When a poor defendant who cannot make bail is given the choice between a plea agreement and spending time in jail before trial, that choice is meaningless. Lose your livelihood, or lose your right to a fair trial.

So it is important that Bertelsman's decision, which is almost certainly based on his indignation over these lawyers' behavior, not be allowed to stand. But I would also urge that we addressed the bigger issue of pre-trial jail time. And if the fen-phen lawyers spend the time between now and when that larger issue is addressed in jail, my baser emotions will be telling my moral outrage to sit down and shut up.

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Send Cars, Oil, and Media

It is terribly frightening that Russia appears to be returning to the secretive, thuggish, and dark internal politics. During and just after the cold war, much popular political theory contended that the black market and gang activity in Russia was an innate result of communism's attempt to control the uncontrollable. (You have to have a deep trust in capitalism and markets for that to make sense. I happen to, but if you don't you'll have to just take my word for it.) Now, with Putin throwing his weight around and the country apparently comfortable with that, we have to wonder if the heavy-handed politics and corruption is more accurately an aspect of Russian culture.

On the lighter side, from this article on the attempt on Berezovsky comes the sentence:

Mr Berezovsky built a fortune after the Cold War ended in car sales, oil and the media.

I love that this is true either way you read it. Not the tearing down of a wall and a weekend coup d'état--the USSR's last gasps were suffocated by Cal Worthington.