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November 30, 2014
Big Spring, Texas
About 10 miles outside of town
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
Van Horn, Texas
Posted by JD Hull at 12:50 AM
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November 29, 2014
Dragoon, Arizona
Posted by JD Hull at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2014
Happy Birthday to the other Wild Bill.
Happy Birthday to the world-changing conservative and libertarian--he called himself both--the late William F. Buckley, Jr., who died (on my own birthday) six years ago at the age of 82. No matter what our political views are or were, we wish he were still part of the American conversation. He was born in 1925. Boy wonder, author, Renaissance man, publisher, editor, ex-CIA operative, accomplished sailor, harpsichordist, novelist, founder of the National Review, co-founder of YAF, author of over 40 books and crafty Gore Vidal-fighter, Buckley was, for lack of a better word, exotic.
His enormous talents, however, were often lost in the fireworks he wryly set off as a conservative visionary, writer and leader. He was a lightning rod. Unfortunately, one of the earlier books he co-authored 60 years ago supported U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy. Yet throughout this life, he formed strong friendships with liberal activists and leaders.
No American has had a better command of the English language, or has reveled in the joy of words, as he did. No one worked harder. No one enjoyed life more. And no one seemed to be on television more in the 60s or 70s, both on his own program and on the talk shows of others. Two fun Buckley facts: During World War II, Buckley entered the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant. In 1945, he was a member of Franklin Roosevelt's honor guard at Roosevelt's funeral. Interestingly, English was his third language. As as a child, Buckley was 100% home-schooled, and he did not formally begin to study English until he was about 7. His first languages were Spanish and French.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2014
William Jefferson Clinton: Lame Duck This, Everyone.
Danny Johnston/AP
William Jefferson Clinton. Love him or hate him, he always comes ready to play. MSNBC: Bill Clinton’s advice to Obama: Have fun during final two years. The piece is by Alex Seitz-Wald and it begins:
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas – Former President Bill Clinton on Saturday urged President Obama to have fun and cut deals with Republicans now that the GOP controls both chambers of Congress. Clinton also said Obama’s decision to delay executive action on immigration until after the election likely depressed Latino turnout.
“I never bought this whole lame duck deal. I just didn’t,” the former president told Politico’s Mike Allen at an event here. “That’s my only real advice. It needs to be fun. It’s a great honor to go to work in the White House. It’s crazy to say you’re a lame duck and waste a single day of that precious time.”
Still, the former president – who himself faced a Republican-controlled Congress in his final two years in office – had more substantive suggestions as well. “I think that he should minimize the chances of being a lame duck, which he can do by continuing to have an agenda, and using the budget process to make deals with the Republicans, because now that they have both houses, they have a much more vested interest in actually governing,”
Clinton noted that his administration was working “right up until noon” on the day of his successor’s inauguration, and suggested that Obama needs to try harder to advance his agenda. There are still “five or six” big things he thinks Obama can get done, including immigration reform.
“There’s nothing sadder than seeing anybody whose term-limited, like a great athlete, get out of playing whatever you play and then you can’t do what you really love to do any more, so you just sort of let go,” Clinton said.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2014
John Michael Doar (1921-2014)
In 1962, Doar and U.S. Marshals escort James Meredith to class at the then-segregated University of Mississippi. Meredith was its first black student. (Photo: AP)
A Midwesterner who wryly called himself a "Lincoln Republican", John Doar, who died at 92 yesterday, made American legal history more than once. Doar worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division between 1960 and 1967, initially as a high-ranking lawyer and soon as its hands-on chief. He was well-regarded nationally in the early 1960s not only for his creative legal mind but also for his moral and (yes) physical courage. A lawyer with sand. The tall, quiet, athletic and thoroughly unflashy John Doar risked injury and his life on several occasions in the early days of the civil rights movement as the federal government's main actor and front man. Alone, unapologetically, on behalf of the federal government in some of the most racially volatile parts of the American South, he confronted crowds on their way to becoming mobs, and talked the angriest ones out of violence. Doar even lived for two weeks with black University of Mississippi student James Meredith (see above), in effect becoming his body guard. Importantly, he had a major hand in drafting the 1964 civil rights legislation passed under the Johnson administration.
Doar also played a unique role in the Watergate scandal of 1972-1974. In the summer of 1974, I had a paid internship in Washington, D.C. (and my first "desk job") in the office of a Wisconsin senator, thanks to what is now the Sanford School of Public Policy. That summer, for Americans then in their twenties or older, John Doar became a household name. He was Special Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee on the question of President Richard Nixon's impeachment. In often televised proceedings, the Judiciary Committee worked and deliberated for three months and eventually voted to submit three articles of impeachment to the full House. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned before the House considered the articles. Republican Doar lead the drafting and convinced key Republicans on the committee to vote in favor of impeachment. Quite a career, and one which kept flourishing after Watergate. See yesterday's New York Times coverage.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:02 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2014
Every Day Thousands of Men Are Being Publicly "Harassed" On Twitter. Who Will Stand Up For Us?
Listen. I'm a man. I'm sensitive.
Men. There are 3.6 billion of us on Earth. And both studies and anecdotal evidence confirm that, every day, thousands of men are being publicly "harassed" on Twitter. This news item, a post by the Women, Action and Media (WAM!) appeared on my Zite feed yesterday morning: "Harassment of Women on Twitter? We’re ON IT". But who will stand up for men when Public Online Real Life Unpleasantness (a/k/a Twitter PORLU) happens? Twitter PORLU affects everyone--every family, company, congregation, locker room, biker club, crack house, man cave, bath house, saloon and bowling team on the planet. Public Online Real Life Unpleasantness on Twitter. It respects no gender. Let us all--men, women, "others"--find a way to put our bodies on the Twitter Machine and stop it.
Isn't it time?
Public Online Real Life Unpleasantness: It happens. To everyone.
Image above: WAM!
Posted by JD Hull at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2014
The mid-terms are over. Let the winners gloat and do their dance.
Dems humiliated. GOP has both houses. Not to worry, sports fans. It swings back in 2016. And then back again in 2018. In meantime, the poor, the new poor and climate policy take one huge step back. Those are way-important short-term concerns. And if you're comfortable, rich or super-rich? Chances are--and more than ever before in U.S. history--that your good fortunes had nothing to do with (1) hard work or (2) brains. Luck and accident of birth are the new "skills". Get over yourselves. Welcome to the new lower England.
from Peasant Wedding Dance, 1607, Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1638)
Posted by JD Hull at 04:34 AM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2014
Congratulations, Senator-elect Shelley Moore.
Last night a college classmate we all knew as Shelley Moore--smart, pretty, well-liked, elegant and the daughter of then-West Virginia governor Arch Moore--won the West Virginia U.S. Senate race. Shelley Moore Capito is currently a seven-term member of the House. When she is sworn in in January, she will not be Duke's first female United States senator. But she will be West Virginia's first--and the first West Virginia GOP senator in over fifty years. Nicely done, Ms. Moore. See today's Washington Post and Talking Points.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
OMG. In the next issue of Tiger Beat...
Getting Weird and Wired with Kim Jong-un, Asian Heartthrob Jefe.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:24 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2014
Enough is enough. Let's put an end to the practice in 38 states of electing judges.
Today, Americans are voting in mid-term federal elections for all House seats and one-third of the U.S. Senate seats. Moreover, except in Louisiana--with its general election in early December--voters in each state are voting for candidates for office in a extraordinarily wide variety of state, county, municipal and local elections. Unfortunately, voters in 37 (Louisiana the exception, again) of the 38 states that popularly elect judges will also participate today in those contests.
The popular election of state judges in all of these states is a bad practice and should come to an end. Anyone who has read my writings in various newspapers and legal periodicals over the past 20 years, or has read this blog since three Hull McGuire lawyers started it nine years ago, knows that our firm prefers whenever possible to do its business litigation in federal courts--where judges are appointed on the basis of merit and, in our view, do appreciably better work as jurists than their state counterparts--and regards state courts as unpredictable and often dysfunctional venues to be avoided.
Regular readers also know that our problem with state courts is that most of them are filled at all levels with judges who are elected. We won't repeat all of our arguments here. Suffice to say that popular elections of judges does two unproductive things. First, in effect, they give successful candidates "constituents". Second, citizens and litigants are given the impression that justice is "for sale." America outgrew electing state judges generations ago, and to continue this practice is wrong. See, also, "Is that a state judge in your pocket? Or you just hugely happy to see me?". Judges should be appointed on a merit system by people who know how to identify and evaluate the excellent lawyers we want on the bench.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)