Paul Luvera Journal

The Sunday Seattle Times reports that the U.S. Interior Department lied for months in  claiming no analysis had been made by them of the effect of greenhouse-gas emissions causing global warming which impacted polar bears. As recently as late December Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and other officials were claiming that the Department had not made an examination of the connection between global warming and shrinking sea ice, when they in fact had made such studies. Not only that, it was…

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Helen Gurley Brown, the former editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine has written a number of books. The only one I’ve read was on this last trip, Wild Again, which I’m afraid I found frivolous. As a result I sort of "sped read" my way through it. However, aA couple of things she wrote about registered with me. One was her advice about travel. She said " When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money, then take…

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I could provide a long list of everyday frustrations. One of the most common involves sullen salespeople whose demeanor reflects how much they hate their job and who could not count change if their life depended upon it. Even with the cash register read out telling them the amount of change they have trouble doing it right. Each time one of these people sticks out their hand full of money and dumps the  change with a "here’s your change" I…

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The National Law Journal  reports that immigration judges are continuing to demonstrate inappropriate and unjudicial conduct as I´ve previously reported about. See post for 3/2/07 Two Circuits, the 7th & 8th criticized two more immigration judges for their conduct. In the 7th circuit, Judge Craig Zerbe rejected an immigrants claim of religious persecution and death threats. In doing so, this judge used phrases like "essentially zealots" and other inappropriate comments. He accused them of contributing to their own problems by…

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Wednesday April 4, 2007 My wife Lita and I have flown from Seattle to Zihuatanejo, Mexico to stay at the Casa Que Canta for a few days before boarding a cruise ship to meet our entire office and their families for our annual office retreat. We´ve not been here before. It resembles a sleepy Mexican fishing village on a beautiful bay, but it has some 80,000 inhabitants. The bay has numerous boats of all sizes bobbing up and down on…

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Seattle Archbishop Alex Brunett in the last issue of the official Catholic diocese newspaper, The Northwest Progress, argued against passage of a pending bill in Olympia that would grant same sex couples the right to make medical and other decisions as other relationships. When Kate Fleming drowned in her Seattle basement from a sudden flood, her partner of ten years had no legal right to be with her or make decisions about her and was legally treated as a stranger…

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I don’t mean to sound like I have a vendetta against Senator Lieberman, but his latest demonstration of loyalty to his buddy George Bush and the Republican party while of turning on a former friend and colleague, John Kerry, is offensive. President Bush rewarded an unqualified Sam Fox with the political favor of nominating him for an ambassadorship to Belgium. This was a repayment for the St Louis businessman contributing $50,000 to the underhanded attack against John Kerry with the…

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The former head of the Justice Department legal team responsible for the government’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry has disclosed gross political interference by the Bush Administration to protect the tobacco defendants in the case. Sharon Eubanks led the Justice Department team suing the tobacco industry and had been with the Justice Department for twenty two years before retiring in December. She recently went public with the disclosure of political meddling involved in the Tobacco lawsuit and says she did…

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Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Acton 1834-1902) is oft quoted for his profound observation: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is the real reason behind the firings of the United States Attorneys – the corruption of power. It is also the explanation for abuse of authority by the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration we have had to endure since their taking office. The Bush Administration gained power through the huge financial support given to it and Republican…

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Alan Axelrod’s book Patton provides a picture of this complex military genius. I have noted General Patton before in this blog: 3/8/07 and 12/6/06. As I read this book, I see many of Patton’s principles of leadership and war which contain ideas that can be applied to trial lawyers and trials. Even though there is a modern abhorrence In the legal profession to compare trials to anything adversarial I think the comparison is appropriate in light of the historical view…

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