“The always indispensable Overlawyered”

Small favors dept.: managers of House health bill agree to amendment reducing incentive for states to repeal existing fee/award limits, but states without such limits would still be accorded new incentives not to adopt them [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Pero]... […]

The lack of medical liability reform in the House health care bill and the political power of trial lawyers were two points argued late Saturday when Republicans moved to recommit the health care bill, H.R. 3962, to committee. A motion... […]

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday voted 230-193 to pass H.R. 2868, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act. (Roll call vote.) All but 21 Democrats voted in favor; Republicans all opposed. With the announcement yesterday of October's 10.2 percent unemployment,... […]

The New York Post has now picked up a slightly shortened version of my City Journal piece on the housing lawsuit that contributed to a voter revolt in Westchester. P.S. The Weekly Standard "Scrapbook" feature discusses the piece, as do... […]

The Washington Times assails as "dishonest" and a "poison pill" the House health bill's provisions bribing states not to enact limits on malpractice awards and attorneys' fees.... […]

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. In several ways, the Wall and its collapse are fitting symbols of communism. They demonstrate several truths about that system that we would be wise not to lose sight of. First and foremost, Cold War-era Berlin was the most visible demonstration of the superiority [...] […]

I was wondering whether some schools have experimented with combined B.A. / J.D. programs, which take 5 or 6 years rather than the usual 7. I’d think these could be useful to students who know they want to be lawyers, and who’d rather be spending the extra year or two earning money as lawyers [...] […]

I just saw a fascinating study on the subject, Eisenberg et al., Who is the 40-Year-Old Virgin and Where Did He/She Come From? Data from the National Survey of Family Growth. Unfortunately, the New Scientist blog post about the study erred in an important way: It reported that among men and women “aged 25 to 45,” [...] […]

Last week I blogged about a very interesting article in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal by Claremont Review of Books contributing editor William Voegeli titled “The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy Services Paradigm” (Autumn 2009).  It compared the tax-services models of California and Texas.  VC commenters were spirited as ever and raised a […]

In last week’s National Journal of political bloggers, one question asked: “If unemployment remains at roughly the current level, what impact will that have on the 2010 midterm elections?” One hundred percent of the Right, and 89 percent of the Left bloggers thought it would hurt Democrats, and most thought it would hurt them a [...] […]