Senator Franken?
Blawgletter learned today that a comedian will run for U.S. Senate in his home state of Minnesota, hoping to challenge incumbent Norm Coleman in November 2008. The news recalled a 1979 appearance by the candidate, Al Franken, on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update:
Jane Curtin: Well, the 1970’s are in their
One kidnapper totally silenced the
other — with an axe — in Fargo (1996).
Blawgletter never tires of watching Fargo. And you? Remember the scene when one kidnapper (Steve Buscemi) complains that the second kidnapper (Peter Stormare) doesn’t talk much? Then he says: "Two can play at that game, smart guy. We’ll just see
If these stones could talk, would they
whisper "go to Durrington Walls, nitwit"?
Stonehenge never fascinated Blawgletter much. Ancient druids? Tree-worshipers? Pish-paw.
But, according to the Los Angeles Times, Blawgletter should have shown more tolerance. A story reports that archeologists found a nearby site (at Durrington Walls) that may have housed solstice-celebrating human party
Did T.R. pull his antitrust punches?
Blawgletter has speculated that antitrust enforcement runs in cycles (see here). More support for the guess comes today from the pages of San Jose Mercury News (article here):
"Right now from a business perspective, it appears frankly that there has been a retreat from Section 2
Would President Homer Simpson subject
new federal rules to political oversight?
In episode 229 of The Simpsons, the local newspaper replaces its retiring food critic with Homer Simpson. Homer’s new power so corrupts him that he slams a dinner theatre performance of King Lear. Another negative notice prompts pizzeria owner Luigi
Economist Adam Smith during
his regrettable long-hair phase.
At least since college, Blawgletter has admired the exquisite contradictions of government regulation, which business trial lawyers encounter all the time. Economic theory, on the one hand, teaches that any meddling with market forces — whether by bureaucrats or private monopolists — hurts overall "consumer welfare", the
The First Circuit holds that debtors can’t rescind their loans on a class-wide basis under the Truth in Lending Act. If you want to rescind, the court concludes, you must do it individually. Opinion here.
Well, duh.
Did Blawgletter say painless? We meant less painful. Sorry. It still will hurt.
Partly because employees of business litigants can copy electronic files an almost infinite number of times and put them on many media (servers, local disk drives, floppy disks, USB drives, CDs, DVDs, PDAs, and so forth) in lots of physical
Patent bully?
Qualcomm, Inc., holds lots of patents relating to digital processor technology, an essential ingredient in wireless telephones. Qualcomm in fact annually earns more than $2 billion in profit from royalty payments on its 1,900-plus patents.
A recent article highlights complaints about Qualcomm’s litigiousness. "Even their best customers hate their guts", someone said.
Sowing wind may cause whirlwind.
Blawgletter admits to a fine obsession with the notion of risk, largely because every business case that goes to trial involves it. That includes "litigation risk" — the irreducible chance that something may go horribly wrong. Plaintiffs lawyers count on litigation risk when demanding supersize settlements (and accepting littler ones)
