Should five percent appear too small
 

I would not go that far.

what bugs me
 

several of the libs here work for corporations. they spend about half their works days posting, so in effect they are being paid money they do not earn. in fact they are stealing from the public. yet when it comes to inheritance tax they are all over not letting people get money they haven't earned.

what bugs me
 

*ahem*

what bugs me
 

It's a market economy. At-will employment.

what bugs me
 

Why don't you go play on the In-house Board. All the people there seem to share your views on this subject.

Tortious Interference
 

I understand the connection between the cap and insurance premiums, but what is the connection between the cap and the others?

what bugs me
 

Thanks for your thoughts on this matter. Later this afternoon, I'll be messengering over some documents I need you to look at. I don't thinks it should take you too much time, but it may take a little research. Oh, and I need your comments in time for my nine o'clock Monday morning. I'm out of town this weekend, so you won't be able to call me, but I'm sure this is no big deal. Thanks!

P.S. If you aren't using your basketball tickets Saturday afternoon, I have some friends in town that would sure like to go!

what bugs me
 

I wish that was my situation. Every minute (or 0.25 of an hour) I spend on here has a direct effect on my bottom line. I'm an idiot.

And before anyone gets crazy, I know I handed you the last three words of the previous paragraph.

Tortious Interference
 

I think about tort reform a lot, and I'm pretty much completely against our current medical malpractice system. That said, the Washington Post started a series last weekend that covered the unwillingness or inability of the medical profession to police its own junkies and drunks. Seriously disturbing stuff, and a few people I work with were quite disturbed to realize that a few of the doctors who were discussed had been involved in their medical care.

Generally speaking, I'd feel more confident and comfortable in my position if doctors were more-often subject to discipline. Instead, the article describes hospitals and doctors gaming the disclipline system. For example, as soon as notification was required for suspensions of 30 days or more, everybody started getting only 29 day suspensions etc....

I'll find it hard to believe if the series itself does not lead to an outcry in the DC area.

Hello

tax question
 

Hey! You're the lady with the fat kid who is tormenting St8's brother!

what bugs me
 

Name one.

Tortious Interference
 

A similar story in the Dallas Morning News a few years ago got the legislature to beef up the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners. I saw statistics from the TSBME last week on their activity in the last few years, and they're getting a lot more complaints and opening a lot more investigations in the last few years. I don't know if that is because of tort reform or because of the increased funding/support from the state. The guy from TSBME seemed to think the latter; I tend to think the former.

I will note that lately the TSBME tries a hell of a lot harder now to get itself on the front page, and most recently, they yanked a license and fined an orthopod about $750,000 here in Houston. After 20 YEARS of malpractice cases, patient deaths, and general bad reputation, they finally went after the guy. The sick part was that he was one of the top Worker's comp guys in the state, and he kept on gettnig state funding to butcher people. I think the paper said he made about $3.5 million a year through his practice.

On the peer review front, I've seen legitimate grievances come up out of quality review in hospitals, and I've seen petty, ridiculous hearings develop out of economic interests from competing physicians or the hospital. Sometimes the peer review process is great, and sometimes it's flawed. I used to represent physicians in front of peer review panels, and for the most part, everyone takes the process extremely seriously. There are good ways and bad ways (see the Polliner case) to do it.

I think that there's a difference between fucking up and being a generally bad doctor. I think that there are different redresses to address different harms as well. If I were a physician, I think I'd rather be sued than censured by the licensure board. It's a hell of a lot easier to explain the lawsuit to the credentialling committee at whatever hospital I'd be seeking privileges. I think that lawsuits play as an important role in policing the profession as peers and licensure boards, though I've seen ridiculous lawsuits come through against many of my clients.

what bugs me
 

Hi! And I know of at least one more without even thinking about it.

what bugs me
 

Hank, perhaps some of my comments about your last billing statement should not have been directed to the managing partner, and I apologize. But you have to agree with me that $23,000 for copying charges is a bit steep. I hope this won't corrode our working relationship any further - I'd hate to have to find new outside counsel.

what bugs me
 

Since when did you start working in a corporation? If I had known that, I'd have been a lot nicer to you.

what bugs me
 

Its okay- you can trust me to ensure nothing bad happens to your corporation! We're Biglaw, and we will make sure Mega-corp keeps sailing smoothly ahead. In fact, since you sound tired, you don't need to look at the documents I prepare, we'll be sure to double proof read!

Overturning Roe
 

Did Rehnquist resign? I thought he was still trying to hang on. This guy will hang on as long as he can. In any case he was the one I thought Bush would get to replace. I think Stevens and O'Connor will hold on until the next President.

Overturning Roe
 

So your two hidden anti Roe sitting members are Kennedy and Rehnquist?

what bugs me
 

Your loss. Though, in reality, not much of one -- I have very little power. At least at this point.

Overturning Roe
 

Rehnquist is one. Believe me, I'm distant enough from the Court that I base my thoughts on what I read... and a lot of that was back when I had time to read stuff other than the papers. Which is to say, I wasn't thinking "Rummy? Stimpy?, dammit... what's his name agin?". Rather, just that there was a close case not so long ago that almost did it.

I'm assuming the 4th dissenter in Casey has since retired, but I can't remember who it was and who the replacement is.

Kennedy is a wild card. Seriously, I think one could envision that him and one or two others just want the solid numbers and the solid rationale in-place to overturn Roe. Not because they think Roe was right in the first place, but because they don't like overturning precedent, and they don't (editorial comment: and shouldn't) want to zigzag on this and appear like they are appeasing a political constituency.

So, what I think gets this done is:
1.) Enough time to make it something other than politically reactive;

2.) 5 people to sign onto a single opinion that says "this ain't none of our business, and never was" (as compared to multiple concurrences that make it seems like nobody really agrees on the law);

3.) and a plausible rationale for overturning and discrediting precedent... mebbe viability or sumthing.

I'm comfortable with 1 and 2, and a little sketchy on what they would use for 3.

But I'm comfortable that nobody in those robes can offer a coherent defense of an incoherent opinion.

Hello

Overturning Roe
 

Rove should go up there and beat the three of them silly. Get the fuck out of there already and let Bush get some new blood up there.

Steven Calabresi and and James Lindgren had it right in an op-ed in the WallStreetJournal last Friday entitled Supreme Gerontocracy.

Some excerpts from the same:

It has been almost 11 years since the last vacancy opened up on the Supreme Court. The current group of justices has served together for longer than any other group of nine justices in American history………

………….Two of the current justices are in their 80s, two in their 70s, and four more between 65 and 69…….The current Court is a gerontocracy -- like the leadership cadre of the Chinese Communist Party.

……………………. While mental incompetence was rare in the first century on the Court, since 1898 it has become a regular occurrence for justices who serve more than 18 years; by one estimate about a third were mentally incompetent to serve before they finally retired.

We think this is unacceptable. No powerful government institution in a modern democracy should go for 11 years without any democratic check on its membership………………………

………………. Tomorrow, a conference of scholars (most of whom are committed to this idea) will meet at Duke Law School to discuss various proposals for such an [Constitutional] amendment. …………….
For 180 years through 1970, we had Supreme Court tenures of about 15 years, a practice that worked well. Now that this system has broken down, it is time to restore some sanity to the process of selecting our justices. A first step would be to institute reasonable term limits for the members of the Supreme Court.

Damn straight!

My law clerks are getting ready for finals
 

so i thought maybe we could review-

Earlier this week Ty pointed to one his deep thinker's very astute analysis that decided while Bush will achieve a Democracy in Iraq- it wasn't worth it.

I think it nice to reivew how his boys (and girl) have moved.

• Brent Scowcroft predicted on the eve of the Iraqi elections that voting there would increase the risk of civil war. Indeed, he foresaw “a great potential for deepening the conflict.” He also once assured us that Iraq “could become a Vietnam in a way that the Vietnam war never did.” Did he mean perhaps worse than ten years of war and over 50,000 American dead, with the Cambodian holocaust next door?

• Zbigniew Brzezinski feared that we could not do what we are in fact presently doing in Iraq: “I do not think we can stay in Iraq in the fashion we’re in now…If it cannot be changed drastically, it should be terminated.” He added ominously that it would take 500,000 troops, $500 billion, and resumption of the military draft to achieve security in Iraq. Did he mean Iraq needed more American troops than did the defense of Europe in the Cold War?

• Madeleine Albright, while abroad, summed up the present American foreign policy: “It's difficult to be in France and criticize my government. But I'm doing so because Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world.” Elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, troops out of Saudi Arabia, democratic demonstrations in Lebanon, West Bank voting, promises of change in Egypt — all that and more is “not good for the world”?

While I am mortified by some of the social decisions driven by the perceived red state fundamentalism, that can be tempered. Given the reins of this country back to the wiggle-brained cannot be repaired. Those of you who "might" vote Dem because of spending know you won't because it''s clear that what drives their big umbrella is a belief that the world is all good people except for us-
The Dems deserve to be in therapy but not the White House.

My law clerks are getting ready for finals
 

[:rolleyes:

Vote for Bush's Nominees, or You Hate the Baby Jesus
 

NYT:

• WASHINGTON, April 14 - As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.
  
  Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

You're right, Hank. This social policy stuff isn't really driven by GOP leadership, and can be easily tempered. I don't know what we were worried about.

Tortious Interference
 

I never said the tort crisis was anything other than insurance industry and corporate hype. I just wondered how all the folk yelling about how we're all paying the costs would feel about sharing the rewards if tort "reform" were enacted.

what bugs me
 

Actually, they're stealing from the shareholders. You and the law firm types are stealing from your partners. I am one of the very few here who can say that I'm not stealing from anybody.

So, your point was?

observation
 

Has anyone else noticed that since Terri Schinndler was murdered while Jeb et al sat on their hands, almost all of the Republicans come off as wimpy little impotent mama boy pussies?

With the exception of Tom DeLay.

what bugs me
 

How many incorrect assumptions did the T-man just make about me?

Tortious Interference
 

Well, the health care providers and the pharm companies all whine that their costs are so high because of, in part, the rapid rise in med mal premiums. Since premiums are going down, they should be able to lower their costs. Same for the health insurers -- lower costs, lower premiums.

See? Everybody wins.

what bugs me
 

I'll guess at leasst one less than you made in your posts about "all the libs" on the board.

p.s., If you want to come out, just pm me. I'll give up my info if you give up yours. Then we needn't make any more incorrect assumptions about each other.

fun quote!
 

Mary Mapes- the girlie who tried to throw the Presidential electionwith her fellow traveler Dan Rather, you remember her right?

Well her book is coming out- I probably won't read it- but here's the money quote:

• “Conservative bloggers are part of the story. They have vilified me, mounted a “wilding” attack against me…we were, it seemed the first victims of a new kind of digital McCarthyism, which uses the same techniques as the old McCarthyism–rumors, slurs, false charges and ugly attacks

That this numbskull, who should be in prison for the shit she tried to pull, could complain of "the same techniques as the old McCarthyism–rumors, slurs, false charges and ugly attacks," given that that is what she did is funny! That tens of thousands of the Democrats will buy her book and sympathze show who the dumb ones are in the great debate-

what bugs me
 

Get a room already.

Overturning Roe
 

The Republican Party would be in a world of hurt if Roe were overturned.

what bugs me
 

Yep. That's what I figured.

Overturning Roe
 

I don't necessarily agree with this, but maybe I am overly pessimistic. It would probably hurt them in states that are already majority D, but I'm not so sure it would hurt them in TX or NE or WY.

Overturning Roe
 

It would hurt them everywhere, since it would mobilize Dem voters whose counterparts on the GOP side are already mobilized by the issue, and since pro-choice moderates would see their options actually limited.

Overturning Roe
 

Or so you guys keep telling us.
Yet, as best I can tell, California would be losing population if it weren't for illegals, Massachusetts is losing population even after illegals are counted, and Illinois is losing its employers and employees (read: tax base).

Seems to me, people are already voting with their feet

Overturning Roe
 

I don't see that making a difference in several places -- where there aren't a ton of moderate Rs, and even the Dems are pretty conservative. I guess they could start losing some swing states.

Vote for Bush's Nominees, or You Hate the Baby Jesus
 

Have I mentioned lately that I hate Republicans?

My law clerks are getting ready for finals
 

Perhaps he did, but without some more context, it's hard to say whether that was the "way" he meant.

Maybe so, if you're just referring to the U.S. troops stationed there, and not to others ready to be deployed, and if you're ignoring all of the European troops that helped defend Europe but whose numbers have not been matched in Iraq.

Even crediting our foreign policy for things like the demonstrations in Lebanon, on balance, no, relative to the alternatives.