National Rifle Association (NRA) Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre presented a paradigm for controlling gun-toting killers in the United States that affirms an unstable, asymmetric, disproportionate and treacherous approach certain to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the epidemic of wanton violence involved in mass random shootings. Continue reading “The National Rifle Association”
How To Distinguish A ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ From A ‘Bad Guy With a Gun’
Since National Rifle Association (NRA) Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s nationally publicized comments after the tragic circumstances of the Sandy Hook Elementary School murders in Connecticut I have been thinking about how any one could distinguish extemporaneously a good guy with a gun from a bad guy with the gun. I envision 2 guys, each believing fervently to be ‘good’, shooting at the other, of course, believing the other to be bad. Impromptu gunfights have that inherent aura about them, a ready, shoot, aim mentality. The other aspect about them is that they tend to be final, or should I say, fatal. Continue reading “How To Distinguish A ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ From A ‘Bad Guy With a Gun’”
Disgusting Bedfellows: Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad
The world’s genuine “axis of evil.”
Disgusting Bedfellows: Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad
No need to search too long for evidence that Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Sryria’s Bashar al-Assad personify the world’s genuine “axis of evil.” Indicia are everywhere. Continue reading “Disgusting Bedfellows: Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad”
The Art of the In-Trial Objection
Objections Generally
No great art is achieved without sacrifice. The best actors, writers and painters labour over their materials, honing and refining them day after day, until they seem “natural” or “spontaneous”. The work of the artist is the work of the trial lawyer. Good advocacy is acquired when the lawyer has the persistence, the patience and the humility to practice and re-practice until the skill she exhibits at trial seems as if it were naturally imparted.
The Art and Plan of Cross-Examination
Cross-examination is a treacherous process, loaded with danger, as so many others have already eloquently stated.2 Indeed, we hear, read and see so much about what decisive effect cross-examination can have in a borderline case that perhaps we create, quite unintentionally, a most undesirable effect: the paralyzing fear of failure. I hope you will humour me a while today; I want to try to alleviate the fear.
Continue reading “The Art and Plan of Cross-Examination”