It is deliciously ironic that I have become a full-time writer.
I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was still in middle school. Starting when I was 10 or so, I spent an hour every night handwriting a novel in a series of red notebooks. But I knew that being a novelist was a terrible career choice — for every rich and famous author like J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, there were tens of thousands who never make a dime.
Being a full-time writer was almost impossible, and I knew it. I had to get a job so I could write on the side.
So I went to…
It won’t be divisive because Republicans are already boycotting America’s pastime
You may have heard: Hordes of Republican voters — two out of every three — still actually believe that Donald Trump was robbed of the election because of voter fraud. They still actually think that voting machines made by Dominion somehow flipped votes from Trump to Biden or just didn’t count votes for Donald Trump.
These people are still actually convinced that Democrats rigged the election, only to lose 13 seats in the House of Representatives, fail to gain a majority in the U.S. Senate, and failed to win a new majority in any state legislative election.
If they don’t, it will be because they committed rampant run fraud
On April 1, Major League Baseball’s opening day, the World Series favorite Los Angeles Dodgers lost 8–5 to the team that could quite well end with the worst record in baseball, the Colorado Rockies.
Clayton Kershaw struggled into the sixth inning. The Dodgers got 15 hits and 8 walks, but went 3 for 16 with runners in scoring position. Cody Bellinger was called out but awarded a single on a fly ball that went over the fence.
The loss means that, according to Trump’s favorite election fraud lawyer Sidney Powell and other Republican acolytes, the Dodgers are bound to…
You have to go all the way back to 1066 to see why the law so often uses two words that mean the same thing
The law is infamous for being exceptionally dry reading. Many non-lawyers find that famous judges known for their writing style and charm, like Oliver Wendell Holmes or Antonin Scalia, are merely readable. Others, like Felix Frankfurter, are inscrutable.
There are two common complaints about how the law is written. One is “legalese,” or the frequent use of terms of art that mean so much more than what the words actually said. The other is the “legal doublet,” where two or more words with identical meanings are used to say so much less than what they could have said.
Legalese has…
Brits watching the U.S. program were stunned by drug advertisements, then the comparisons began
I hate celebrity gossip. My apathy towards the personal lives of celebrities is borderline aggressive.
But I’m a legal writer and the strains of racial resentment run deep in the marriage of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, so I’ve followed the buildup to, and now the fallout from, their interview with Oprah Winfrey.
An unrelated and completely unexpected takeaway from the interview: The American healthcare industry is terrible.
British People Watched American TV and Were Shocked By Drug Ads
In the U.S., the interview aired on Sunday, March 7, on CBS. In Britain, the full interview won’t be shown until the night of Monday, March 8.
The outcome of the trial could not have been much better
On January 6, 2021, a Trump rally led to his supporters storming the Capitol Building while votes were being counted. Democrats accused Trump of inciting an insurrection. The House of Representatives impeached him. 43 Republicans then refused to convict Trump in the Senate trial and he was acquitted, clearing the path for him to run for office, again.
Lots of Democrats are shaking their fists in frustration. But the outcome of the Senate trial is the best thing that could have happened for them.
House Managers Showed That Trump Was Guilty for All to See
In their 16 allotted hours of prosecution, the House managers painted an astoundingly damning scene. …
No one bothers hiding their political agenda behind arguments and reason anymore
Political hackery is the unprincipled advocacy of a political agenda or the pursuit of raw power, and boy has it turned a corner in the last decade. Gone are the good old days of politicians getting dragged through the mud for “flip-flopping” or changing their personal convictions. Gone even are the days of hiding hackery behind a façade of semi-reasoned thinking.
Nowadays, political hackery has become so ubiquitous that it is par for the course. It is expected. It is flaunted as loyalty. …
Their flawed concept of evidence makes them immune to reason
Any liberal who has tried to argue with a Trump supporter has a story to tell.
My favorite is when a friend of a friend who worked in a fire department told everyone that we should “reopen the country” and “try for herd immunity” from the coronavirus. The “debate” that we had went as follows, verbatim:
Me: That would be inhumane.
Him: Then why don’t fire fighters have to follow COVID protocol?
Me: Are you saying that the virus doesn’t exist?
Him: Why don’t fire fighters have to follow COVID protocol?
Me: Are you saying that it doesn’t exist?
Him…
You can tell from what they’re not saying
It’s hard to tell which is more disturbing. On the one hand, you have 6 Republican Senators and 121 House Representatives who insisted on claiming, without evidence, that the 2020 election was fraudulent, even after the Capitol building was stormed by a like-minded mob. On the other hand, you have Republican politicians calling, en masse, for “unity” after the insurrection attempt by their followers failed.
Even if it is less disturbing, the calls for unity are far more dangerous.
As you read this, members of far-right paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys are actively planning attacks on the U.S. Capitol…
In agony after your first “get back in shape” workout? Yeah, that was me
That’s right, the Nickel Sock Fairy — the Tooth Fairy’s cousin. While she takes baby teeth and leaves petty cash, I remind adults of their physical limitations.
Like her, I show up in the middle of the night.
Unlike her, I’m there because you just did an ill-advised workout. While she’s in a tutu and has a magic wand, I’m in military boots and I’ve got a tube sock filled to the elastic with nickels. She flicks her wand and turns molars into quarters. I wind up into a full-armed swing and just bludgeon people.
I’m looking at you, Mr…
