Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MAY 22, 2026 – Yesterday, I attended a quarterly board meeting of a non-profit organization, with which I’ve been involved for some years, the World Press Institute. Its 65-year (thus far) mission is to promote free and open journalism around the world. The founding concept was an annual fellowship program anchored here in the U.S. …
MAY 19, 2026 – Today at high noon I joined two other lawyers with whom I’d teamed up in a contested real estate matter for the past two years. What had started out as the prospective sale of farmland turned into a full-blown lawsuit, including a protracted appeal, followed ultimately, by a closing on a …
MAY 18, 2026 – . . . North Korea! Or more precisely, Kim Jung-un. Or more accurately, the loser is . . . the United States and nuclear non-proliferation. Now that the Republicans have settled on a ratio existendi ex post facto for the war against Iran—namely, keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of …
MAY 9, 2026 – Yesterday I heard a story from the horse’s mouth, as it were—that is, testimony that was non-hearsay. Though the story wasn’t told under oath, the witness was eminently trustworthy and credible. The cautionary tale was a chilling firsthand account of authoritarianism. Moreover, the example wasn’t an abstraction or something that “happens …
MAY 8, 2026 – In continuation of the pursuit of continuing legal education (“CLE”) credits, I’m in the middle of a six-hour webinar symposium on “Universal and Quality Health Care,” sponsored by the University of St. Thomas School of Law (St. Paul, MN). Again, along with a host of UST-sponsored CLE courses on constitutional law …
MAY 5, 2026 – Sooner or later it was bound to happen: the Teflon would suffer a big scratch. Heretofore . . . The “Access Hollywood tape”? Ancient history. The “perfect phone call”? No one remembers—or cares. January 6? A Democratic plot. DOGE butchery without accounting? Old news, forgotten pain. ICE? Same. Assaults on the …
MAY 4, 2026 – My work-week routine is to consult briefly my sundry information sources as they stand at the top of the day, then head out on my well-traveled hour-long path to, throughout and back from “Little Switzerland.” I often use hiking time to mull over potential material for the day’s blog post. Today …
MAY 1, 2026 – Long before the Trump Era, I used to muse that “In America one could find the best of life and the worst of life.” This observation was not particularly insightful. After all, we have a population of around 340 million living within 3.8 million square miles spread across 58 degrees of …
APRIL 30, 2026 – Today while I was striding along toward the end of my daily walk, with both hiking poles now in one hand, I heard a neighbor call out. M. was out walking her aging canine friend and approaching the quiet intersection I’d just crossed. I acknowledged her greeting, and since I was …
APRIL 19, 2026 – If ever there were a case for the superiority of experts over amateurs, we’re seeing it play out in the current fiasco over Iran. According to the latest reporting, the sometime Appalachian memoirist JD Vance,[1] along with the stereotypical New York real estate developer Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, all-around grifter …
APRIL 6, 2026 – I’m afraid my brain has gone rogue again, at least in my dreams. What worries me further is the power of suggestive writing—that is, making something occur simply by writing about it. The reader will recall that in last Friday’s post, I described variations of the recurring “litigation dream,” similar to …
MARCH 11, 2026 – I remember watching/listening to portions of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2022. She gave a credible account of herself—erudite, respectful, genuine, articulate, and a methodical thinker. Based on her C.V. and on what I observed, I thought—Yes, she seems well qualified to …
FEBRUARY 5, 2026 – White House Border Czar Tom Homan—Gruppenführer Gregory Bovino’s replacement as overseer of “Operation Metro Surge”—announced yesterday a 700-agent drawdown from the purported 3,000 ICE agents and Border Patrol agents on the loose in Minnesota, mostly in the Twin Cities metro area. Ask people on the ground here, however, and no one …
FEBRUARY 3, 2026 – (Cont.) The dramatic conclusion of Into the Bright Sunshine features the clash between advocates of civil rights and protectors of states’ rights at the 1948 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. In that era, party platforms carried far more weight than they do today, and the intra-party fight over the civil rights plank …
FEBRUARY 2, 2026 – On July 6, 2016 Philando Castile was shot and killed by a policeman during a routine traffic stop here in Minnesota. The shooting occurred less than half a mile from our quiet, leafy, liberal—and by way of our complacency, racist—town of Falcon Heights (pop. 5,200). Within a single news cycle, news …
FEBRUARY 1, 2026 – I’ve written about him several times on this blogsite, most recently on September 7, 2025: our neighbor, the inimitable “Mr. Paulson,” literary savant, retired honors English teacher at Roseville High, life-long coach, and honorary scout for the Twins. Our paths often cross as he’s out walking the family’s ancient canine and …
JANUARY 31, 2026 – I’ve known lots of conservatives ever since I was old enough to parrot my two older sisters as we romped around the house in the fall of 1960 shouting, “Nixon, Nixon, he’s our man . . . Let’s put Kennedy in the garbage can!” I was in first grade and didn’t …
JANUARY 30, 2026 – After my daily ski outing at noon, I returned home to “de-ice” over lunch and the latest news about ICE. When I saw live coverage of the mass demonstration underway in downtown Minneapolis, six miles from our driveway, I left word with Beth, who was out, and headed down to join …
JANUARY 29, 2026 – First, a disclaimer. I’m not an immigration lawyer or immigrant rights advocate. Decades ago, I handled a few procedural hearings in several pro bono asylum cases that my firm had taken, but my involvement was otherwise insubstantial. In other words, I’m not an expert nor do I claim to be one. …
JANUARY 28, 2026 – Last Sunday, in addressing abuses by ICE agents in Minnesota, Governor Walz compared ICE agents’ treatment of children in Minnesota to the experience of Ann Frank. His exact words: We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story …
JANUARY 27, 2026 – What happens next in Minnesota; in the United States of America? Our speculations are driven by a combination of hope, fear, knowledge, ignorance, wishful thinking, and in many cases, deep-seated attachments to ideology and religious beliefs. The influence of these factors is no less than at any other juncture along the …
JANUARY 26, 2026 – At noon today I drove to the Whipple Building, headquarters of Minnesota ICE operations. The outside temperature registered 6F on my car dashboard—a veritable heat wave compared to last week’s deep freeze. High chain-link fences on top of Jersey barriers lined the approach. Behind the fence on one side was a …
JANUARY 25, 2026 – I remember a disturbing moral question produced by a scene in the 1997 movie Titanic. A key factor in the actual disaster and depicted graphically in the film was the inadequate lifeboat capacity, which could accommodate only 50% of the passengers. This tragic reality led to the order that women and …
JANUARY 24, 2026 – This morning I was putting the finishing touches on another post about ICE—specifically, the unintended consequences of the policy behind it—when suddenly, out of the calm cold blue, I received notification that a man in Minneapolis had been shot by ICE agents. Now the world knows what happened yet again at …
JANUARY 23, 2026 – This morning we woke up to find that the outside temp was “A LOT” below zero, the lowest all week. At least the sun was shining, ever higher and brighter, if not warmer, as the North Pole shifts incrementally but inexorably toward the sun . . . at least till the …