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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)