That’s what the broadcast license-renewal process has become:  a rubber stamp procedure.  The following are the words of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps:

[U]nder pressure from media conglomerates, previous commissions have eviscerated the renewal process. Now we have what big broadcasters lovingly call “postcard renewal” — the agency typically rubber-stamps an application without any substantive review. Denials on public interest grounds are extraordinarily rare.

It wasn’t always like this. Before the deregulatory mania in the 1980s — when an F.C.C. chairman described television as a “toaster with pictures” — the commission gave license renewals a hard look every three years, with specific criteria for making a public interest finding. Indeed, broadcasters’ respect for the renewal process encouraged them to pay for hard-hitting news operations. That was then.

Here are just some of the criteria for renewal the F.C.C. considered in the 1990s but never put into place:

• Did the station show programs on local civic affairs (apart from the nightly news), or set aside airtime for local community groups?

• Did it broadcast political conventions, and local as well as national candidate debates? Did it devote at least five minutes each night to covering politics in the month before an election?

• In an era when owners may live thousands of miles from their stations, have they met with local community leaders and the public to receive feedback?

• Is the station’s so-called children’s programming actually, in the view of experts, educational?

Cartoons aren’t always funny. Sometimes they make serious points more efficiently than a big page of prose. There’s no better example than these cartoons from Cagle.  This set is entitled “Latin America’s View on Immigration.”

I caught this on Andrew Sullivan’s site, The Daily Dish.

The premise? What if Mary Poppins was made into a horror film? Here’s what:

Silly bureaucracy in action! An internationally renowned cyber-guru who often comes into the U.S. to train DoD, DoE, and other alphabet soupers was held for 4 hours by customs, and deported as he came in to speak at a Black Hat convention.

His own report on the issue makes it clear that it was a paperwork snafu that could have been cleared up immediately, if only anyone would have admitted to the authority to accept his signature on a standard form. Instead, he was deported, and has to re-apply for a visa (because he was deported).

The glitch is that the American organization that invited him to speak invited him as an individual, rather than himself as the CEO of his small company.

While it was bottom level customs bureaucrats that blocked him, I suspect that it is the political fight about visas for techies that snagged him. The tug-of-war between the security position of “block everyone”, and the freedom side of “allow everyone” is being fought in congress and for the upcoming election. Should America allow itself to reclaim technological superiority, or to stagnate?

Here’s a cute video by “AngryLittleGirl” called “Gullible is not in the Dictionary”

It makes the simple point that one should check the source when someone presents a “fact” such as “95% of Americans are scientifically illiterate” or “Jesus rose from the dead”.

That reminds me of “Passion of the Zombies“

It’s not because I am obstinate, though I can be obstinate. 

Rather, I simply can’t believe things like: “A virgin had a baby” or “A man who was dead later became alive” or “This piece of bread is really a man’s flesh.”  I can’t believe such things because these things are simply not true.  To me, such assertions are nonsense and it befuddles me when I hear other people uttering them.  It’s especially befuddling to see the way many people utter religious claims.  It’s as though they believe they have knives in their backs and they damned well say such things, or else.  “Or else what?”  I often think.  “Let go of those scary thoughts.  It’s just a bad dream.  Free yourselves! Wake up!”

I also try to be kind.  I am sadded to see people wasting their time and energy due to fear and ignorance.  I want to do my part to help those who feel compelled to utter patently untrue things, even if they only do this on Sundays.

I am not alone, of course.  In our frustration, many of us non-Believers wish to come up with a quick and dirty explanation for why other people publicly proclaim oxymoronic religious claims. It is this urge to quickly dispense of this mystery of religion (the mystery that anyone takes religious claims seriously) that is addressed by Pascal Boyer in his 2003 article, “Religious thought and behavior as byproducts of brain function.”  Boyer is a faculty member in the departments of anthropology and psychology at Washington University in St. Louis.

In an earlier post, I briefly mentioned Boyer as one of the prominent writers on religion who holds the position that religion is a byproduct of normal human cognition.  This byproduct theory is certainly one emphasis of Boyer’s article.  He also reminds us, however, that it might not be easy to determine a simple mechanism causing this byproduct.  After all, human cognition, the source of this “byproduct,” is exceedingly complicated.

In his article, Boyer notes that most attempts to explain religion in terms of evolution have proved unsatisfactory “because a single characteristic identified as crucial to the origin of religion is not in fact general.” For instance, my characterization above (that people follow religions due to fear and ignorance) is one of the overly-simple explanations Boyer had in mind.  Boyer suggests that any meaningful explanation for religion would to be a cognitive cocktail, requiring reference to many aspects of human cognition. 

In his article, Boyer presents a chart to warn us to avoid many of the commonly heard simple (and false) explanations for “why does religion exist?”  Here are the commonly heard overly-simple explanations for religion, coupled with Boyer’s refutations:

The claim: Religion answers people’s metaphysical questions.
Why it’s not true: Religious thoughts are typically activated when people deal with concrete situations (this crop, that disease, this new birth, this dead body, etc.).

The claim: Religion is about a transcendent God.
Why it’s not true: It is about a variety of agents: ghouls, ghosts, spirits, ancestors, gods, etc., in direct interaction with people.

The claim: Religion allays anxiety.
Why it’s not true: It generates as much anxiety as it allays: vengeful ghosts, nasty spirits and aggressive gods are as common as protective deities. (more…)

It’s another chapter of a disturbing and repeating story: Where good science conflicts with the aims of the Administration, science loses.  Stir in the arrogant ignorance of yet another unqualified Republican political hack.  This story is from today’s Washington Post:

A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.

Who kept the report from being published?  William R. Steiger, who has no background in public health.  What qualifications does he have to hold a job running the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services?

Steiger, 37, is a godson of former president George H.W. Bush and the son of a moderate Republican who represented Wisconsin in the House and hired a young Dick Cheney as an intern. The elder Bush appointed Steiger’s mother to the Federal Trade Commission in 1989. A biographical sketch of her on the American Bar Association’s Web site states that Steiger’s parents, now deceased, were “lifelong friends” of many members of the same congressional class, including the Rumsfelds and the Bushes.

Truthdig.com has produced a video displaying the coordinated smear campaign FOX is running against left wing bloggers.

Fox News is out to smear the blogosphere with a slew of unsavory tactics, such as comparing liberal bloggers to the Klan and Nazi Germany. It has already met with some success, prompting JetBlue to pull its sponsorship from the YearlyKos convention.

Truthdig is also proposing a method of putting a stop to the lies and defamation:  write to the advertisers of local FOX programming to express your outrage that they support such programming.  

Football hero Pat Tillman died a military hero, defending the U.S from terrorism, right?  How convenient.  Or did he die of friendly fire?  It depends on what official version of the story you care to believe.  Tillman’s story reeks of cover-up. 

Now take a look at this evidence.

And now take a look at this interpretation suggesting that Tillman was murdered because he planned to return to the U.S. to speak out again the Iraq occupation.  And then look at this article from SFGate.com.  Here’s an excerpt:

[Tillman] started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in it regularly. (His journal was lost immediately after his death.) [Pat's mother] Mary Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”

The federal government’s decision to lay a subpoena on Michael Moore provides a psychological insight (not a new insight) into the Bush Administration. The suboena probably has something to do with Moore’s visit to Cuba.  

American law doesn’t prohibit Americans from visiting Cuba, but it does prohibit American citizens spending their own money in Cuba.   As I understand the law does allow certain non-profit organizations to take your money before you land in Cuba and they can spend money to feed and house you.  So, perhaps, Bush is trying to nail Moore on this law.   Or maybe it’s something else.  We just don’t know yet.  It is interesting that numerous Americans visit Cuba every year without a subpoena (just Google “Cuba” and “vacation,” yet Moore gets nailed when he goes to Havana. 

The “why” is obvious. Michael Moore has driven a harpoon through a gaggle of corrupt politicians with Sicko.  And we do know that Bush & Co. are vengeful, small-minded megalomaniacal and fascist control freaks. 

The question on my mind is how many insurance company executives can the federal prosecutors possibly finagle onto a jury?  I ask this because the prosetor will desperately need them to convict Moore of anything. But there just aren’t enough of those high-salaried executives out there to outnumber the millions of common citizens who know from personal experience that Moore is largely speaking truth when he tells us that the American health care system is inefficient, incredibly expensive, exclusionary, and often corrupt.  Oh, and here’s another thing.   Many of the competent federal prosecutors have been fired anyway–because they were competent.   So who’s going to try this federal case against Michael Moore?

And what will result from this subpeona, no matter what it is really about?   It will make Michael Moore into a victim/hero.  It will be a world-class promotion for people to go see Sicko.  The prosecution of Michael Moore will go nowhere.  What is accomplished by this new subpoena is that Americans have been reminded of what a petty-minded vindictive man sits in the Oval Office.  We saw this same vindictiveness before, when the Administration outed Valerie Plame.

Moore dared to embarrass the Republicans (and many Democrats) with Sicko. He did his work in a way that is resonating across American.  Millions of Americans are now asking why we can’t afford to guarantee every American citizen a decent level of medical care.  In Sicko, the scene with six- and seven-figure healthcare campaign contributions superimposed over many of our most powerful elected officials drew gasps and derision at the theater I attended.  That’s political blood in the water and the citizens are moving in.   

Here’s another thing that Moore did to embarrass Bush:  By going into Cuba and showing (by walking down the street and being treated kindly by the people, including the doctors) Moore exploded the myth that Cuba is a hideous place, simply because it remains “Communist.”  If anything, Moore’s scenes from Cuba made me want to visit Cuba for an extended stay. 

In sum, Bush allowed his reptilian emotions take over when he gave the OK to send out that subpoena (if you don’t think the decision to send it wasn’t cleared on high, think again).   The bottom line is that Bush is going to pay for this one.  Almost no one CARES about technical laws regarding visiting or spending money in Cuba.  This is Michael Moore’s dream to get attacked by the federal government.   It was Osama Bin Laden’s dream to successfully bait Bush enough to cause Bush to expand the war beyond Afghanistan.  

Being easily baited is not the mark of a strong leader. 

For many scientists who study it, religion should be placed into one of two camps: 1) religion is an aberration, a mental virus; or 2) religion is an adaptation–that religion enhanced the survival of Believers.  A well-written article by Robin Marantz Henig explores this issue in the New York Times.  The title is “HeavenBound: a Scientific Exploration of How We Have Come to Believe in God.”  Henig sums up the alternatives by reference to blood.  A trait might be “adaptive,” like the ability of blood cells to transport oxygen.  On the other hand, a trait might be simply a byproduct, such as the “redness” of blood.

Is religion prominent because it’s red or because it actually carries oxygen?

Several notable scientists and philosophers lead the charge from the first camp (that religion is a byproduct).  One of them is Richard Dawkins, who argues that “religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident.”  Others falling into this camp include Sam Harris, Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer and Daniel Dennett. These believers in religion as a “byproduct” would also include Stephen Jay Gould, who proposed the use of the term “spandrel” to describe traits that have no adaptive value of their own.

If religion is a byproduct or a “spandrel,” of what is it a byproduct or “spandrel” of?  Psychologists have looked carefully at several candidates: agent detection, causal reasoning and theory of mind. 

We see agents everywhere, it turns out, even in inanimate objects.  The byproduct argument is that seeing agency is more adaptive as a general rule.  “If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you’re still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.” 

The second candidate is causal reasoning, which we also see everywhere, even when the phenomenon is random.  We have a hard time dealing with the possibility that things just happen, including claims of supernatural events.  “Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events.”

A third candidate is “theory of mind.”  Synonyms for this mental module include “intentional stance” and “social cognition.”  Another synonym is “folk psychology.”  Whatever it is called, this mental module “allows us to anticipate the actions of others and to lead others to believe what we want them to believe; it is at the heart of everything from marriage to office politics to poker.”  The theory of mind is so pervasive because it is so important to our social functioning.  It allows us to intuit the existence of minds that we cannot see or feel.  This opens the door to the belief in minds that are unconnected to bodies. It opens the door to beliefs in souls and gods.

These three mental module candidates set us up to believe in what Pascal Boyer found: ubiquitous examples of “minimally counterintuitive” believes.  (more…)

In this short video, Max Blumenthal shows that there is no better way to find out what people are really like (really like) than to show up and watch them in action and listen to them. This video is called “The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour.”

The subject of this video is the July 16 convention of the Christians United for Israel. As you can see, those attending support Israel in a very peculiar way.  For more on that, see here. This video includes appearances by Tom Delay, Joseph Lieberman and megachurch paster John Hagee. Many of the attendees spout end times joy, at least until Blumenthal is unmasked, then rudely ushered out.

It makes you want to grab your own camcorder and go attend some of the other conferences “out there.”

After standing in line at the post office for longer than I should have had to, I finally got to the front of the line and realized the flap of one of the envelopes I wanted to mail was not sticking, so I asked the clerk for a small piece of tape. (I was only standing in line because I didn’t know the postage because they have raised their rates so many times I lost track of what it costs to mail something.)

Anyway, in response to my request for a small piece of tape, and despite the fact that she had a HUGE ROLL OF TAPE inches from her left elbow, the postal clerk said the United States Postal Service has a new policy which is that because they SELL tape they no longer GIVE IT AWAY.

I told the clerk I cannot understand how come MY government can afford to spend billions for the people of a country like Iraq, none of whose citizens I ever met or expect to meet in this lifetime*, but cannot afford to give me - a taxpayer and, by the way, a damn good and long-time postal service CUSTOMER - one little piece of scotch tape.

*BTW, I don’t expect to meet anybody from Iraq in either this lifetime or the hereafter because I think they have a different Heaven than we have. OK, I feel better now, but I’m still miffed.

This is the title of a newspaper commentary column that I stumbled onto recently. It was less annoying than I thought it would be. The “New Facts” turn out to be mainly the testimony of Ken Ham’s Creation Museum (Here’s my earlier post about that).

One gripe I have is the idea of testimony as evidence. This is a very human concept, the basis of legal evidence, and anathema to good science. In science, testimony is merely a claim of observation intended to lead others to be able to repeat the observation. Furthermore, in science an observation is meaningless unless it can be objectively measured with unimpeachable instruments.

Author Tom McVeety brings up a couple of measurable data tidbits free from their context, but responders to his column neatly provide the missing framework for some, and politely attack the innumeracy obvious in others.

It is worthwhile to read many of the comments to the column. Among other threads, they get into a clash between Christian denominations that accept scientific conclusions, and those that deny science when it disagrees with a particular narrow interpretation of the Bible.

Just for grins, here’s a rebuttal on BadAstronomy.com

The title to this post is from a bumper sticker shown in “Generation Chickenhawk,” a video shot last week by Max Blumenthal. The scene?  The College Republican National Convention in Washington D.C.

Here’s proof that our young Republicans love wars as long as others do the fighting. 

Blumental’s ten-minute video is well worth watching if you’re looking for unassailable evidence that neocons are actually members of the political equivalent of a fundamentalist religion.  Interesting to see that Tom Delay still has a willing audience.

In his blog at Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald describes the core mentality of those who remain pro-war:

We need to prove to the world how powerful and tough and strong we are by kicking ass and starting wars and putting our boots on the ground and getting our hands dirty and bombing and invading and fighting like the Real Warriors we are because Civilization is at Risk. And the way we should do that is by sending those people — the ones way, way over there — to go and fight and risk their lives in the wars I love.

More than ever, Iraq remains a battle over hearts and minds.   The site of the battle is not only Iraq, however.  The battle is being fought right here in the U.S., with the corporate media serving as an ally to those who prefer the status quo.   The status quo is the inevitable result of the lack of information regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Best known for his dystopia, 1984, George Orwell cared deeply about language. A good example is Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” 

Judith D. Fischer reviewed Orwell’s contributions to the use of plain English in legal writing in “Why George Orwell’s Ideas About Language Still Matter for Lawyers.” Montana Law Review, Vol. 68, p. 129, 2007. Fischer reminds us of the twin themes of Politics and the English Language: writers should express themselves in plain English and that “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness” prevent or conceal clear thought. According the Orwell, “The fight against bad English is not frivolous.” What is the bottom line?

Orwell argued, because clear thought is necessary for cogent analysis, writers who avoid bad habits in their use of language will think more clearly.

(p. 130). Orwell crystallized his approach to writing into six rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

Needless to say, these rules, inter alia, are commonly broken by sesquipedalian lawyers as indicated and set forth in the aforementioned discussion. Or should I say, rather: Lawyers often break these rules. Lawyers aren’t the only culprits, of course. Politicians have done their share of damage.

Citing an article by Michael Traynor, Fischer asks us to consider the Orwellian titles to two federal laws, the “Clear Skies Initiative,” a law that “would increase pollution,” and the “Healthy Forests Restoration Act,” which would “deplete forests.”

Clearly, much work remains to be done. The legal writing we see in trial court and appellate court briefs is often opaque, sometimes impenetrable. On the other hand, many lawyers and judges have taken conscious steps to clean up their writing. Fischer points out various “legal writing experts have explicitly acknowledged their debt to Orwell.” Those experts include Bryan Garner, whose seminars and written works make clear legal writing their constant and unrelenting focus.

On a personal note, to the extent that my own legal writing is cleaner than it might have otherwise been, I’ve long owed a debt to Garner. For lawyers who want to make their writing more understandable and punchier, a good place to start is Garner’s The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts (2004).

This is a must see for those concerned about the state of the Media:  Bill Moyers’ interview with “The Yes Men,”  These two innovative men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, use “satirical humor laced with lunacy to call the media’s attention to serious issues.”

Here’s an excerpt:

BILL MOYERS: Are you concerned about the ethical implications of what you are doing, of fooling people or making fools of people?

MIKE BONANNO: We’re much more concerned with the ethical implications of not doing it.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

MIKE BONANNO: What I mean is that it seems like it’s incumbent upon us to try to do something about the really grave ethics issues in the world, the real problems, companies that will go and exploit resources that we know are going to, in the long run, kill us or many people around the world. These kinds of wrongdoings are at such a scale, they’re so vast compared to our white lies, let’s say, that we think it’s ethical. Our path is actually ethical one.

BILL MOYERS: I mean, you would not get away with this in Putin’s Russia or in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or in China today.

MIKE BONANNO: Or maybe even in France. I’m not entirely kidding. I mean, we do have really good free speech laws here. Unfortunately, there– you know, they’re kind of circumvented by other kind of loopholes. You know, we can speak at the volume of however much money you have. But, you know, we are lucky to actually be able to do these sorts of things here, although we’ve also done it in Europe. Because we do engage in this as a form of protected speech. It is satire. It is parody. It’s a way for us to speak sort of beyond the volume that we normally would be able to.

According to The Nation (citing the results of a recent Pew survey)

Mainstream media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign so far has been mostly cynical and vacuous. Nine out of ten campaign stories ignore policy and focus instead on electoral tactics and the horse race, according a recent report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. It is disturbing to consider that most voters learn about candidates either from this shallow coverage or from nationally televised debates. (The first presidential debate of 2004 drew 63 million viewers.)

The above article actually focuses on an alternative to passively accepting horserace political coverage:

Yet now the netroots–that amorphous collection of bloggers, political operatives and web activists–is trying to transcend politics as usual by pushing candidates and reporters to focus on the issues. At the second annual YearlyKos Convention in Chicago the first week of August, web activists plan to explore new ways to communicate voter concerns to Democratic presidential candidates.

Television is part of the American political problem, but not only for the obvious reasons.  See Ebonmuse’s review of Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason.  Here’s an excerpt:

[T]elevision is a time- and space-limited medium with high barriers to entry, making it in its essence a medium of the rich and powerful. It is not a place where people can have a two-way conversation; rather, it turns people into passive receivers of information, unable to respond as they see fit. Worse, television is not a meritocracy. One’s ability to participate in the medium is not based on the merit of one’s ideas, but rather on how much money one can afford to spend to purchase airtime for them . . . Unlike print, television can present vivid, visceral images that bypass the faculties of reasoning and trigger emotional responses - especially fearful responses - far more directly, overwhelming the faculties of deliberation.

NPR recently interviewed psychologist Elliot Aronson, co-author, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me).   Aronson worked closely with Leon Festinger back in the 1950’s “designing experiments to test and expand dissonance theory.”  Here is NPR’s plug for the interview:

We all have a hard time admitting that we’re wrong, but according to a new book about human psychology, it’s not entirely our fault. Social psychologist Elliot Aronson says our brains work hard to make us think we are doing the right thing, even in the face of sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I listened closely to the interview (you can listen on-line too by visiting the above link) because this was yet another serious attempt to apply psychology to a critical real-life situations.   Exhibit A during this interview was the President’s dysfunctional attitude toward to continued U.S. occupation of Iraq.  

According to Aronson, cognitive dissonance “is a drive, like hunger or thirst.”  It is directed toward the human need to define who we are in a good light in order to reduce dissonance, so that we can “sleep well at night.”  It is “a powerful and unconscious motor” that smoothes out our mental “rough edges.” 

We commonly refer to cognitive dissonance as “justification.” Regarding many simple mistakes, it’s no big deal to spin the incident in a way that deflects blame and embarrassment from one’s self.  If you spill wine on the carpet, you justify that that it was only white wine, or that the damage wasn’t noticeable, rather than thinking about the toxic (my word) thought that you were clumsy to spill the wine. Aronson warns that when we make serious mistakes, reducing dissonance “keeps us from learning from our mistakes.”   It makes us do the same mistake over and over again.

In the case of Iraq, cognitive dissonance invites neocons to convince themselves that that it was a good decision; those who have invested heavily in defending the invasion are thus likely to repeatedly come up with new justifications for invading.  Aronson goes so far as to state that President Bush engages in his specious justifications to allow himself “to sleep well at night.”  When cognitive dissonance is at work, ambiguous CIA reports filtered.  “You only pay attention to the helpful information.”  I would think that those people who have spent the most energy defending the President’s decision, thereby antagonizing their friends and family, would (because of cognitive dissonance) be those who are remain among the 20% of this country who still support the U.S. invasion.  They are the same people, I would surmise, most likely to claim that the U.S. is in Iraq “because of Al Qaida.”

Research shows that if a high investment is required to achieve something, cognitive dissonance will come into play, causing us to reach for justifications (even wild justifications) to paint ourselves in a good light.  Aronson discussed one experiment where those subjects who had to go through a severe initiation later claimed that that a boring group was worthwhile (compared to subjects who didn’t have to go through a strenuous initiation, who rated the group as boring and not worthwhile).  The bottom line?  It is too hard to justify doing a lot of work to get into a boring group.   The solution is to re-evaluate the group as worthwhile. That is cognitive dissonance in action.

What is the best solution to the damage often inflicted by cognitive dissonance?  (more…)

Businesses are increasingly inserting arbitration provisions into contracts to prohibit the employees and consumers from resolving important disputes in courts of law.  Such arbitration provisions compel the employees and consumers to present his or her case to an “private arbitrator,” who need not even be an attorney.  There is no jury trial.  There is no automatic right to engage in pre-trial discovery.  There is no public access.  There need not even be an in-person hearing (unless you pay extra). The arbitrator often has the right to decide the entire case by merely looking at paperwork and you might not even have a right to be there when it happens.  

If the arbitrator fails to apply the law correctly or if the arbitrator refuses to consider important evidence, too bad.  There is no appeal.  There is no accountability.  Your claim against a big company will simply disappear.  And here’s another huge concern: the big corporations are repeat customers to the big arbitration companies, while you will be a one-time player.  Under these circumstances, who is the arbitrator likely to favor?

Wouldn’t it be terrible if arbitration clauses started showing up everywhere?  Well, they are.  Arbitration clauses are increasingly appearing in consumer and employment contracts. Too often, these clauses take the form of unreadable fine print boilerplate, slapped onto the back of the contract.  Almost no one reads such fine print, yet large corporations are increasingly killing off important legal claims in Court based on that unreadable fine print.  

Powerful corporations increasingly filing “Motions to Compel Arbitration,” asking Courts to throw important cases out of court and into the hands of arbitrators.   The effect?  For too many people, it’s like putting a padlock on the doors to the courthouse.  If this trend keeps up, our courthouses will become empty museums, places where we used to allow citizens to present their grievances against the rich and powerful.

Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Hank Johnson have both filed bills in Congress to restrict the use of arbitration clauses in certain types of contracts. The proposed legislation is entitled the “Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007.” The new law would amend the Federal Arbitration Act. Senator Feingold’s website describes his bill as making sure that Americans are not forced into signing agreements that mandate arbitration:

to resolve employment, consumer, franchise or civil rights disputes. The bicameral Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007 amends the Federal Arbitration Act to make pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate employment, consumer, franchise, or civil rights disputes unenforceable.

The proposed legislation does not prohibit arbitration, but limits it to situations where it is “knowingly and voluntarily” entered by both parties. Limitations are focused on employment, consumer and franchise disputes, as well as “transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power. The proposed legislation would also restrict bans on consumer class actions. The bill seeks to ensure Americans are not forced into mandatory arbitration agreements in employment, consumer, franchise or civil rights disputes.

Groups supporting the Act include the American Association for Justice, Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Federation of America, Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings, Home Owners for Better Building, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Consumer Law Center.

Binding mandatory arbitration is an issue that affects each citizen of each state. Whether you are an employee who is being asked to sign an arbitration agreement even to apply for your job, or if your are taking out a loan, or if your are a franchisee who is required to arbitrate disputes with the franchisor, binding mandatory arbitration is a real problem that can deprive you of your hard-earned money and your legal rights. 

You can step up and do your part to stop binding mandatory arbitration. You can click here to send an email to your representatives and senators. Please take the time to help fight for our right to open, accessible, and accountable justice. For the full text of the House version of the proposed legislation, go here.

In my “other” life, I work as a consumer lawyer.  To learn more about other developments in consumer law, you are welcome to check this Consumer Law Blog (where I am one of several contributors) at my law firm’s website.

It always pains me to see powerful leaders fail to understand the concept of sunk costs. In this case, the leader I refer to is Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, who recently expressed the mistaken belief that America’s past death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq should somehow influence future strategic plans.  To quote Lynch, who is reportedly pleading to keep his troops in Iraq:   “To me, it would be wrong to take ground from the enemy at a cost - I’ve lost 80 soldiers under my command — 56 of those since the fourth of April - it would be wrong to have fought and won that terrain, only to turn around and give it back….”

Sorry, Lynch, but the men you have lost simply do not bear on any decision to maintain a bad policy in Iraq.  The *only* thing that justifies keeping troops in Iraq is having a plan which requires those troops to be there, and right now there is no such plan.  Past losses of lives, money and equipment are completely and utterly irrelevant, just as it is irrelevant to point to, say, the lives, money and equipment lost on 9/11 to somehow justify building the Freedom Tower.  Building the Freedom Tower makes sense only if there is a valid strategic *future* reason to build it, not because of the destruction that happened at the site six years ago.  Likewise, keeping U.S. troops in Iraq makes sense only if there is a valid strategic *future* reason to keep them there, not because of the lives that have already been lost.  Unfortunately for the nation, including Maj. Gen. Lynch, the other U.S. troops in Iraq, and all Americans back home, President Bush also fails to understand this principle, and we are all going to pay dearly for it.

Bill Maher writes this on Huffpo:

America was invented by liberal men in Boston and Philadelphia. Not that I don’t love all of America, but rednecks who think they’re the real America should read a history book once in a while. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Madison — the whole lot of them were well read, erudite, European thinking children of the enlightenment, and they would have had absolutely nothing in common and less to say to a cowboy simpleton like George Bush.

I would disagree with Maher only in that Bush is, in no sense of the word, a cowoy.  He is a pretend cowboy.  Cowboys really work with cows and they work hard.  Cutting brush in a cowboy hat is not being a cowboy.  

I wouldn’t make this up. It was reported on MSNBC today.

Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

How does the Pope know this?   Hey, he just knows.  Just like he knows that gay unions are “”pseudo-matrimony.”  Just like he knows that we shouldn’t read Harry Potter novels. Just as he knows that it is better for millions of Africans to die of AIDS than to use condoms.  He knows that evolution has not been scientifically proven.  And he knows that limbo no longer exists.  And he knows that women are inferior and that there is a Devil and he knows that a virgin had a baby.  And he knows that Catholicism purified indigenous populations.  Although he doesn’t believe in slavery, even though the Bible clear says that it’s OK to own a slave. 

One Vatican official was quoted as saying that the Pope’s position is “not backtracking on ecumenical commitment.”   Of course not.  The Catholics are still willing to get together with people of other religions–as long as those other religions acknowledge that they are “defective” and “not true churches.”  Maybe the Catholics could simply put “Member of Defective Religion” labels on the chairs for the people from the other religions, so that they will know where to sit.

It’s time for all of those defective false chuches to get with the Pope’s pronouncement or else all their followers will burn in hell, by the eternal and boundless love of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.  Amen.

It’s really difficult for me to understand how a man of this unusual intellect can repeatedly graner great attention from the media and and further receive constant warm affection from tens of millions of Americans.