Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Welcome Home

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

We are back in Miami. The return journey was notable for its length, and especially for the ineptitude of baggage handling at MIA on our flight from Chicago. I'm used to the idea that you never get a bag off a plane in less than 29 minutes — the airport boasts that 95% of flights get their first bag within 30 minutes — but 50 minutes? For a domestic flight? On a weekday evening?

Someone did manage to get three or four bags off our flight about 35 minutes after we landed — and I bet they log it as within 30 minutes — but the fact is that not one more bag came off until about 50 minutes after the flight landed, so pretty much the entire plane's passengers were there (mostly tourists from the look of them) getting more and more steamed in the hot, crowded, low ceilinged baggage claim area around carousel 24.

MIA is festooned with signs bragging that it was selected as the 'airport of the year' last year.

About the 45 minute mark I went to the nearby baggage handling desk to ask if they had a complaint form. The man looked at me as if I was insane, or speaking a language he never heard of. Once that failed to drive me off, he started tapping on his computer screen. No, they don't have complaint forms, but there's a long-distance number you can call 24/7 or a PO Box you can write to. The lady behind me in the line said she was there for the same reason – to find out what they'd done with our flight's bags.

I was afraid I might know what was going on: could it be that the ramp rats were back? (In the past MIA has been plagued with a baggage theft ring.)

Then again, maybe it was the MIA TSA. They won an award too.

In the end, the bags appeared, and we dragged ourselves home.

Posted in Miami | 14 Comments

Media Matters Patiently (Pointlessly?) Rebuts Each and Every Birther Claim

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Media Matters Action Network has produced The Definitive Birther Takedown.

I guess it's handy to have a one-stop-shopping site for this, but as I said earlier, the people who believe this stuff are not going to be swayed by mere facts. Facts, it is well known, have a liberal bias.

Posted in Politics: Tinfoil | 12 Comments

The GOP Has Troubles With Reality

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Mike Stark has turned his talent for ambush journalism to Republican Congressmen. He asked them if they personally believed that Barack Obama is legally entitled to be President of the United States. Almost none of them would affirm this belief on camera. Watch Birthers on the Hill and be amazed, disgusted, or worried, depending on your emotional fortitude.

Incidentally, anyone who is unaware of the literal incoherence of the Birther arguments need look no further than this appearance of Birther spokesperson, right-wing radio host, and former Watergate conspirator and felon G. Gordon Liddy on Hardball:

Chris Matthews's best move here wasn't confronting Liddy with documentary evidence he is wrong — mere documents failed to move him, as they failed to move so many of the crazies in the Birther cult — but rather his spinning the Birther view to its logical conclusion: If, as they argue, President Obama was born abroad, not only is he ineligible to be President as he's not a 'natural born citizen' but the President is an illegal alien who should be deported since he's never been naturalized and doesn't have a visa. Liddy swallowed that, but this is so crazy that it's going to turn the press — except maybe Lou Dobbs who conceivably might lose his job over this — against them.

Note also that Liddy's reference to a “deposition” is a fiction — the actual source of this canard is a mistranslation in an interview.

More here and here if you need it.

Back when I lived in England, both sherry-drinking and beer-drinking intellectuals in the UK used to deride the British Tory part as “the stupid party”. Today British intellectuals boast that whatever their Tories may be, they're not as crazy as the US Republican party. They don't give people with burglary convictions radio shows in the UK either.

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law, Politics: Tinfoil | 8 Comments

Health Care Wars — the Ground Game

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I like this ad from Americans United for Change, “SNAIL”: Tell Congress to Pass Health Insurance Reform Now!:

I get why the GOP wants to stall health care reform: if it gets voted now, Obama wins. I accept that they don't care enough about uninsured (or pseudo-ensured) Americans to vote the way I think they should.

What I don't get is why observers think delay will do the GOP much good. What legislators have waiting for them when they get home is a lot of people who have lost their jobs — and thus their health care, and even more people nervous that it could happen to them. They are going to be bombarded with localized pitches, like this one which details the effects of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act on Florida's 18th Congressional District:

America’s Affordable Health Choices Act would provide significant benefits in the 18th Congressional District of Florida: up to 22,000 small businesses could receive tax credits to provide coverage to their employees; 11,000 seniors would avoid the donut hole in Medicare Part D; 1,100 families could escape bankruptcy each year due to unaffordable health care costs; health care providers would receive payment for $110 million in uncompensated care each year; and 118,000 uninsured individuals would gain access to high-quality, affordable health insurance.

Our Congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is a particularly hard case with a relatively safe seat and she's unlikely to be moved by mere considerations of the benefits to local families. But that won't be as true elsewhere.

Posted in Health Care, Politics: FL-18 | 3 Comments

Software Is Easy to Hate

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Jeff Atwood writes at Coding Horror about software hatred:

One of the (many) unfortunate side effects of choosing a career in software development is that, over time, you learn to hate software. I mean really hate it. With a passion. Take the angriest user you've ever met, multiply that by a thousand, and you still haven't come close to how we programmers feel about software. Nobody hates software more than software developers.

OK. But they're not the only ones who hate it…..

Posted in Software | Comments Off on Software Is Easy to Hate

For Students About to Take the Bar Exam

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Ilya Somin has A Modest Proposal for Bar Exam Reform:

Members of bar exam boards, such as the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners and presidents and other high officials of state bar associations should be required to take and pass the bar exam every year by getting the same passing score that they require of ordinary test takers. Any who fail to pass should be immediately dismissed from their positions, and their failure publicly announced (perhaps at a special press conference by the state attorney general). And they should be barred from ever holding those positions again until – you guessed it – they take and pass the exam.

After all, if the bar exam covers material that any practicing lawyer should know, then surely the lawyers who lead the state bar and administer the bar exam system itself should be required to know it. If they don't, how can they possibly be qualified for the offices they hold? Surely it's no excuse to say that they knew it back when they themselves took the test, but have since forgotten. How could any client rely on a lawyer who is ignorant of basic professional knowledge, even if he may have known it years ago?

Prof. Somin's point is that the bar exam as constituted is pretty silly. And he's mostly right: the bar exam tests only a small fraction of what lawyers need to know, much that they don't need to know, and even more that they don't need to have memorized. We all forget lots of it quickly. I know that I couldn't pass the New York bar exam today without some serious review — I've forgotten huge swaths of estate, family and criminal law, not to mention most of the details on New York's CPLR. On the other hand, I've learned huge swaths of things not tested on any bar exam, including federal administrative law, trademark law, and of course internet law. Does that make me a bad lawyer or a specialist?

Unlike some, however, I don't oppose the idea of a bar exam in principle. I think there's much to be said for ensuring that all lawyers have a common foundation. There may also be something to ensuring that people who practice in a given state are sensitized to the peculiarities of local law, although I'm less certain about the need to enforce that with an exam. The problem is that the bar exam's choice of subjects is arbitrary and archaic, and the testing somewhat picayune as well.

To those about to undergo our profession's hazing ritual, good luck.

Posted in Law: Practice | 3 Comments