What are you afraid of? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Many thanks to RCH for this link to an essay about how we have allowed fear to envelop our culture and drag us rightward on social issues in recent years. Thought-provoking.

-- Bruce Godfrey

How to Survive the Police - Progress Report 1 Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

The following is an unofficial Table of Contents of "How to Survive the Police," subject to modification.

1. Why “Survive the Police”?

2. Police Psychology

3. “Winning” and “Losing”

4. Traffic Stops

5. Pedestrian Stops

6. “Avon Calling”

7. Arrest and Bail

8. Racial and Other Profiling

9. Surviving the Federal Police

10. Using Your Attorney Well

11. Teaching Your Teenagers About the Police

12. 10 Mistakes to Avoid

13. Resources

14. Conclusion

-- Bruce Godfrey

The Stressless Practice of Law??????? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

This article from the Washington State Bar Association newsletter discusses the oxymoron of law practice without stress. I found it interesting and may discuss some aspects of it in an upcoming post.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Ehrlich swings to the right Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Poor Bob Ehrlich.

He is a Princeton educated former attorney of lower-middle-class German-American background who attended a private high school in Baltimore on a full scholarship. Your undersigned is a Princeton educated current attorney of lower-middle-class German-American background who attended private high school in Baltimore County on a full scholarship. That's where the similarities end, I guess.

Given an opportunity to cut transfer taxes on gay quasi-spouses who transfer property to one another, he vetoed the bill. Ehrlich believes in cutting taxes but his base believes in sticking it to gays more.

Given an opportunity to facilitate medical decisions and hospital visitations of gay quasi spouses, he vetoed the bill. Ehrlich believes in "family values" but, I guess, not for the "wrong" families, i.e. families with gay couples facing heart-rending medical decisions. Perhaps Bob wants to make sure that when gay and lesbians die, they die with a well-placed right-wing Republican cowboy boot up their rears, or at least that's what his latest "wet workers" are telling him to do.

In fairness, libertarians don't have much of a chance to sell out. We are kind of like ugly hermits who take pride in not being whores; the market for libertarian sell-outs is not that great because we have nothing literally to sell out. To the extent, however, that Ehrlich has occasionally leaned libertarian, such as his support for semi-decriminalizing medical marijuana by making its use non-jailable (Md. Ann. Code, CR 5-601(c)(3)), we should be angry at Ehrlich because he knows how to be decent, how to be non-discriminatory and compassionate. He is more culpable for selling out to the right-wing fanatics, not less.

I can see a website now, "http://www.marylandersfornoneoftheabovein2006.com." When I filled out form 504 to the Comptroller last month, I remembered why I don't vote Democrat. Thanks, Bob, for reminding me why I registered Libertarian and why you and I are truly different, demographics aside.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Robert Edward Lopez, RIP Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Bob Lopez of 98 Rock died on Sunday the 22nd after an extended battle with lung cancer. Lopez was a small-l libertarian voice in Baltimore on a variety of topics from civil liberties to drug decriminalization to many others. While I was not a "loyal listener" per se, I do remember him from almost 20 years ago when I was briefly active as a high school student with the peace activism work of the Baltimore office of the American Friends Service Committee. He did not speak to our group but even then he was known as a strong speaker with strong views on civil liberties matters.

Lopez would probably be uncomfortable with the hagiographical accounts of his life and work; he was simply a newsman, interviewer, radio personality, civil libertarian and, by accounts, a pretty decent human being who did not take life or himself overly seriously. R.I.P.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Advice and Consent Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I don't think I can top the analysis of Josh Marshall's recent Talking Points Memo post on the hypocrisy of the both parties in the current Senate filibuster impasse.

Generally speaking, a parliamentary body is capable of deciding its own rules until proven otherwise. The filibuster is not a subject of discussion in the Constitution; neither is voting "yea" or "nay", the establishment of committees for Senate administration or the definition of a quorum. The Constitution does not authorize or limit the existence or use of the filibuster. Each party has organized and cast votes for or against filibusters of judicial nominees in the last fifty years.

As recently as six and a half years ago, the Republicans were blocking President Clinton's judicial nominees and no Republican spoke of the "right" of an up or down vote; Democrats did.

The question is whether a majority is at liberty to change a supermajority rule by a unique reinterpretation of the Constitution which no prior judicial or legislative precedent has ever supported at the federal or, to my knowledge, at the state level. If this is so, it is tantamount to a bar to all supermajority rules by the Senate; no hard principle prevents a majority from arbitrarily ruling a Senate rule unconstitutional.

Most of these same Republicans, meanwhile, will reliably attack Roe v. Wade as an act of judicial re-writing of the Constitution, without noting the irony of re-writing "Advice and Consent" to mean "guaranteed floor vote on all nominees without minority filibuster."

In contract law, we learn that the power of contract is not so much to bind someone else as to bind ourselves reliably so as to induce reasonable reliance by others. The same is true of legislative rule-making. A parliamentary body that cannot pass and consistently enforce its own rules in a reliable manner is a weak, unstable body, not a strong one.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Juggling Grenades Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Oh, how chaotic it has been.

The Godfrey house has had a lot going on.

We have been dealing with the following issues:

1/ an overall happy, healthy newborn with all that that entails

2/ an overall happy toddler with a diagnosis of autism with all that that entails (medicare waivers, County infants and toddlers, Kennedy Krieger, you name it)

3/ intensified job pressures for me with an active litigation docket

4/ family staying over for the past week from out west, family being my wife's sister and her wonderful 4 and 1 year old daughters

5/ my wife - amazingly - taking on the responsibilities of matron of honor for my sister's wedding in three weeks

Nonetheless, this website is called Crablaw Weekly, not Crablaw When The Crab Finds It Convenient. Accordingly, I will make a greater endeavor to hold up my end of the blogging bargain.
-- Bruce Godfrey