RECCE ROOM

An exercise in political imagination, inspired by Paul Harvey's "If I Were the Devil." If I were a corrupt city commissioner, I wouldn't begin by raising taxes. Not yet. I wouldn't begin by taking away the people's rights, either. That would be much too obvious. No, if I were a corrupt city commissioner, I'd begin by convincing the people that I was trying to help them. I'd tell them their city was growing too fast. I'd remind them about the traffic. The overcrowded roads. The infrastructure that couldn't keep up. I'd remind them about their property taxes. And I'd tell them I had a solution. I'd tell them that developers should pay their fair share. Who could possibly disagree with that? I'd make certain the people understood that I wasn't asking them for more money. Quite the opposite. I was trying to save them money. But there would be a catch. There would have to be a catch. You see, my city wo...

  It was bound to happen sooner or later. This author was called for jury duty. Three months, and I would have to call in every week to see if I had to report. OK. So be it. In advance, I thought I would never be seated as a juror. Why? Two reasons: 1. I am a firearms instructor. Can't imagine a criminal defense attorney would want me in that jury box.  2. I believe wholeheartedly in the idea of jury nullification. No prosecutor worth their salt would want me in the jury box.  For the record, judges often warn against jury nullification. The thing is: jury nullification is not illegal in Tennessee. The apparent contradiction comes from the difference between what a jury has the power to do and what judges believe jurors have a legal duty to do. Interesting fact, in the case that was tried, and for which I was selected as a juror, the judge directly said: "As jurors, you are the ultimate judges of the law and the facts."  That statement openly invites nullification, i...

  It's like cracking open a cold beverage at the end of a hard day. 

  There's never a bad time to re post the Graham Combat Killhouse Rules.  Rule 1: Nobody is coming to save you.  Rule 2: Everything is your responsibility.  Rule 3: Save who needs to be saved.  Rule 4: Kill who needs to be killed.  Rule 5: Always be working. 

When I was growing up, my mother had a friend I'll call Dan. Dan had children around the same ages as my brother, my sister, and me, so our families spent quite a bit of time together. The kids got along. The adults were friends. Everything worked pretty well. Except for one thing. Dan was late. Not occasionally late. Not “traffic was bad” late. Not “I couldn't find my keys” late. Chronically late. If you told Dan something started at noon, you could reasonably expect him sometime around 1:00. This was apparently not a character flaw in Dan's mind. It was simply the way the universe operated. Events had official start times, and then they had Dan Standard Time. Dan also had a flair for drama and what today we'd probably call a touch of Main Character Syndrome. His arrival was rarely an unnoticed event. Normally, that was merely annoying. Then my mother decided to throw my little sister a surprise birthday party. The plan was simple. My sister wou...

Just for posterity, here are the words from John Correia: "One reminder on the Lindsay Clancy verdict: I know people have big feels. It’s okay to feel big feels. But you aren’t the jury. You might even have watched the trial, but you ALSO almost then certainly consumed a lot of content that the jury didn’t see, and there are reasons they didn’t see things. The whole system works to ostensibly give the jury as clean a look at the evidence as possible and then the prosecution and defense argue for how that evidence speaks. Those 12 jurors listened carefully to all 21 days of testimony. Those jurors made it through the entire selection process to be a representative group of the defendant’s peers. In my experience jurors, especially jurors in this high profile a case, do their best to be careful and thoughtful. They take their job seriously. They could not unanimously agree on a verdict. The judge and both sides argued for how long to let them continue and I am sure the judge tried h...