At the risk of offending the International Union of Pimps and Ho's, here's one of the jungle's unpleasant truths: No decent man wants his wife, mother, sister or daughter to be a stripper - even if he'll pay to watch someone else's. And therein lies one of this episode's lessons.

So what’s the effect of Skilling’s telling the government that it doesn’t understand how Enron’s business worked? Let’s assume that no matter how hard Sean Berkowitz and the other young prosecutors study Enron they’ll never “get it,” to use a Skilling expression. If that’s the case, then how can the jury have a firm grasp of many of the sophisticated accounting and financial decisions at the heart of the government’s indictment? Will the jury give Skilling and Lay a free pass because Enron was essentially a collection of sophisticated accounting decisions and financial transactions that were fully vetted by Enron’s outside lawyers and auditors?

a wrenching rendezvous with promises that seemed compassionate, or at least convenient, when originally made but that cannot be kept without ruinous consequences.

"The Ed Rendell administration vetoed the Fair Share Act, which obviously would have taken us from a joint liability philosophy to a proportional doctrine in terms of lawsuits," Swann said. "I can guarantee in a Lynn Swann office if the Fair Share Act comes across my desk it gets signed into law."

Precariousness is an essential element in the life of the entrepreneur, a French word now more associated with the much despised Anglo-Saxon "liberalism" and its merciless dog-eat-dog capitalism. But these days the best examples of the entrepreneurial spirit are hardly Anglo-Saxon: China, India, Korea, Chile, all rising and growing, even as France and much of Europe decline.

 

Against precariousness? That is perhaps to be expected in a country where 76% of 15-to-30-year-olds say they aspire to civil service jobs from which it's almost impossible to be fired. This flight from risk is not just a sign of civilizational senescence. It is a parody of the welfare state. Yes, the old should be protected from precariousness because they are exhausted; the sick, because they are too weak. But privileged students under the age of 26? They cannot endure 24 months of precariousness at the prime of life, the height of their energy?

 

There have, I suppose, been other peoples in other places who yearned for a life of mediocrity. But leave it to the French to make a revolution in its name.

The Divide and Conquer strategy is part of the evil genius of the frivolous lawsuit industry. No single business is inconvenienced enough to resist the law, or the unjust application of the law. The average business owner is already maxed out, just trying to keep his business going. Most of them will try to resolve the situation as quickly and as cheaply as possible. No one resists: Everyone pays. A perfect money-making formula.

You can quibble about the numbers, but the overall trend is clear: We're on a collision course. On the one hand, we have a private-sector economy that is vibrant, creative, continually transforming itself and producing millions and millions of new jobs -- overcoming the stagflation of the late 1970s, the sharp recession of the early 1980s, the savings and loan bailout of the early 1990s and the trauma of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On the other hand, we have a public sector that is threatening to gobble up more and more of that economy as time goes on.

The Gospels are scary, dark and demanding. It is not surprising that people want to tame them, dilute them, make them into generic encouragements to be loving and peaceful and fair. If that is all they are, then we may as well make Socrates our redeemer.

 

It is true that the tamed Gospels can be put to humanitarian purposes, and religious institutions have long done this, in defiance of what Jesus said in the Gospels.

 

Jesus was the victim of every institutional authority in his life and death. He said: "Do not be called Rabbi, since you have only one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, the one in heaven. And do not be called leaders, since you have only one leader, the Messiah" (Matthew 23:8-10).

 

If Democrats want to fight Republicans for the support of an institutional Jesus, they will have to give up the person who said those words. They will have to turn away from what Flannery O'Connor described as "the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus" and "a wild ragged figure" who flits "from tree to tree in the back" of the mind.

 

He was never that thing that all politicians wish to be esteemed — respectable. At various times in the Gospels, Jesus is called a devil, the devil's agent, irreligious, unclean, a mocker of Jewish law, a drunkard, a glutton, a promoter of immorality.

 

The institutional Jesus of the Republicans has no similarity to the Gospel figure. Neither will any institutional Jesus of the Democrats.

"[W]hen we hear claims like state Rep. Fred Morgan's that lawsuits are "out of control" we tend to call foul.

Two surveys -- one from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of Oklahoma judges themselves -- tend to agree with us. The U.S. chamber ranked Oklahoma as one of 18 states having a "moderate" civil justice system.

It ranks the Sooner state's justice system as No. 33 among all states. That's hardly the kind of out of control system some lawmakers keep referring to.

The chamber survey of public corporation attorneys and those from insurance companies placed no Oklahoma city or county in the top 30 for least fair and reasonable litigation environments.

The second survey polled Oklahoma's 147 district and associate trial judges. More than 68 percent of them said frivolous lawsuits account for less than 5 percent of the cases assigned to them.

This reasoning, of course, suffers from several flaws in logic.  The writer's ultimate conclusion is that Oklahoma's litigation system is A-Okay and therefore not in need of reform.

To reach that conclusion, the writer cites the Chamber survey, which concludes that the state is one of 18 having a "moderate" civil justice system. The writer asks the reader to make the leap from this fact to the conclusion that no reform is needed.  When parsed this way, however, it's clear that the conclusion does not follow from the evidence.  Oklahoma may be moderate (especially in comparison to those states that have truly dreadful systems) but that does not mean that it cannot be improved.

Similarly, the writer cites a survey of Oklahoma judges that finds that those surveyed believe that "frivolous" cases account for only five percent of the cases they hear.  That's interesting, but not very meaningful as a tool for assessing the need for reform.

Would you feel comfortable if the brakes on your car failed "only" five percent of the time?  What if your favorite brand of over-the-counter pain relief contained "only" five percent of harmful contaminants? 

I have no particular beef with the fine State of Oklahoma.  In fact, as I write in Out of Balance, Oklahoma is one of only five states with an attorney fee-shifting offer of judgment rule.  Unfortunately, when I completed Out of Balance, data was not yet available from the state to determine precisely how effective that rule was at reducing non-meritorious cases from the system.

"There should not have been any physical contact in this incident.  . . I am sorry that this misunderstanding happened at all and I regret its escalation and I apologize."

In 1998, San Antonio attorneys Andrew Toscano, Robert Kugle and Robert “Trey” Wilson, III of The Kugle Law Firm, prosecuted a product liability lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler and others seeking $2 billion in damages. The case involved a Dodge Neon that was involved in a rollover accident after the driver fell asleep behind the wheel. Four of his passengers died in the accident. Shortly before trial in 2000, DaimlerChrysler's attorneys learned that:

Toscano or someone acting with his approval had tampered with the steering system in the Dodge Neon to create the false appearance that it was defective.

 

Toscano and his colleagues repeatedly refused to abide by court orders to turn over photographs of the vehicle’s steering system taken before it had been intentionally damaged – photographs that they knew would expose the case as a fraud.

 

An investigator working for The Kugle Law Firm attempted to bribe and intimidate witnesses into “forgetting” that the driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel and caused the accident.

When the fraud was revealed, Judge David Peeples dismissed the case and sanctioned Toscano, Kugle and Wilson for nearly $1 million. The sanction remains unpaid, although Toscano and Wilson continue to practice law.

Important social policy on complex issues now is being made through class action suits. Interest groups want government to regulate what we eat and drink, how we advertise products, and decide these matters for our children. Those groups haven't been able to get their agenda adopted through the democratic process, so lawsuits are the final frontier - an opportunity to impose their vision on society through the back door.

 

Their vision is not of liberty and personal responsibility but of social regulation in service of what they see as a better, healthier life.

 

Even if that vision was sound, it isn't one that should be imposed on America through the courts. No party to this process - not the judges, the lawyers, or the interest groups - can decide what is right for us and for our children, nor can they know the consequences of substituting liability for those who produce our food and drink in place of personal and parental responsibility. We should all be clear that it takes a parent - not a lawsuit - to raise a child