Lance Stott | January 8, 2009
From the NYT today. “Why are you so happy?” a reporter asked. “Look around you. Don’t you see the misery that you are helping to cause?” A girl who looked about 18 was screaming from pain as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few [...]
Lance Stott | January 8, 2009
Let me start by saying I’ve never, to my knowledge, convinced a non-lawyer of the truth of what I’m about to say: Defending people, who are guilty, is absolutely the right thing to do. Like I said, I’ve never convinced a non-lawyer that the above statement is true. I’m going to make a run at [...]
Lance Stott | January 7, 2009
Probation revocation cases don’t usually get set for trial. There’s several good reasons for this, including the fact that a judge can revoke a person’s probation for even the most trivial of reasons, and the fact that it’s the judge, and the judge alone, who gets to make that decision. So when the judge tells [...]
Lance Stott | January 7, 2009
As long as I’m rambling, there’s another thing. “Human shields.” Whenever they shoot, or blow up civilians they say the enemy was using them as “human shields.” Israel has been saying this about Gaza. Before that, Lebannon. And before that, US spokespeople said the same thing about Iraqis. I don’t know who gets credit for [...]
Lance Stott | January 7, 2009
This afternoon I caught a bit of Obama’s statement on the fighting in Gaza. I was only half watching, but I remember they’d just switched over from talking about a group of Palestinian children, who’d been killed by an Israeli rocket. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house,” I heard him say, “Where my [...]
Lance Stott | January 5, 2009
The people who keep track of such things (the BEA) have a specific definition in mind when they talk about saving. It’s “personal disposable income minus personal consumption expenditure.” Or, what people make, but don’t spend. Intuitively, it makes sense. It’s problematic, though. For one thing, some people object to the fact that capital gains [...]
Lance Stott | January 5, 2009
Not long ago I read another one of those articles about how Americans don’t save enough. Which got me thinking about something I read a long time ago – that nations can’t save. Consider: Suppose there’s a country where everyone is the same age. All their lives, the people work hard, and save. They accumulate [...]
Lance Stott | January 1, 2009
This is relatively old news, but since it’s new to me, I’m writing about it. Several years ago, a man was indicted for delivery of marijuana. He pled “not guilty,” and went to trial. The jury acquitted him of the delivery charge, but convicted him of the lesser offense of possession, instead. The man then [...]
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