Reflections of a Boston Lawyer

Remember Vincent Foster , the Clinton confidant who committed suicide after a series of Wall Street Journal editorials criticized his role in the administration?  In a torn-up suicide note, he famously lamented that, in Washington, "ruining people is considered sport." The Obama presidential candidacy elevated the sport of vilification to  new heights.  Opponents branded Obama with all sorts of labels - socialist, communist, fascist, Nazi, Muslim - in an effort to end his Presidential aspirations.  They were, of course, unsuccessful.  (By the way, I include "Muslim" in this list as an example of opposition efforts to damage Obama, even though it is wrongheaded to consider the word derogatory.) The sport of vilification has one goal - taking down an opponent.  It does so by obscuring truth and promoting false and often scandalous information.  Unlike most sports, it has no rules.  And, as the Vincent Foster case so vividly demonstrates, it can be extremely, and i

August has arrived.  If summer is measured as the span of time between the 4th of July and Labor Day holidays, we are, more or less, at the mid-point.  It also marks a divide of sorts.  August is the month of the legislative recess, both in state legislatures (my home state of Massachusetts being one such state) and in Congress.  It is the month when baseball teams still in contention begin their final runs, and the first month when there can be no more "non-waiver" trades.  Football teams in training camps soon will begin exhibition play.  Colleges and universities prepare for the return of their students to campus.  The heat of summer slowly begins its transformation to the cool of fall, summer golfers take their last swings, and vacationers take their final forays to the beach.  And new lawyers take a deep breath as they put the bar exam into their rearview mirrors and look ahead to new jobs and the uncertainty of a wobbly job market. In the past two days I have read rep