Before that though, I'm going to apologize to Easter (lawyer joke) and to the guy/gal that wrote it in the first place (no name of author was on the email).
Something to Ponder
T H E 10 C O M M A N D M E N T S
The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this:
You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians...It creates a hostile work environment.
5 comments:
Hah, it's okay, I'm not a lawyer, just an enabler and co-conspirator.
Ah, another email forward pining for the good old days when there were no seatbelts or drunk driving laws or IRS or law books or internets and you could just go sack and pillage France if you wanted to, because everyone could do exactly what they wanted. Lol.
Actually, there's a grain of truth in the joke. Posting a Judeo-Christian list of directives on a courthouse would be every bit as obnoxious as posting Muslim scriptures commanding us all to wear headscarves and ZZ Top beards, Mormon-offshoot directives to marry your teenage daughters to some wacky old survivalist dude who lives in a "compound" or quotes from neoatheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens demanding we all agree with their currently bestselling polemics right now.
Court is the intersection where all of the above come together to figure out how to live together as a society without killing each other over ideological differences, and while I will allow that Judeo-Christian religions have contributed a lot towards advancing this goal (and perhaps even originated it), I don't think they have a monopoly on tolerance, so the only religious icon I really want to see in court is Themis (who can't read ideological plaques anyway, due to her blindfold) (and also carries a sword to pwn anyone attempting to hang any ideological plaques in her immediate vicinity, sort of like Xena).
Hehe, your comment was longer than my post. :P
The other night I mentioned in order chat that I had received a jury summons. Pro was there and he immediately launches into a lecture of "getting out of jury duty tips."
Me: Pro, I'd get kicked on voir dire (i.e. interviewing of prospective jurors done by lawyers) like I always do but this time I don't even have to go because I was excused after spending a day sitting through jury selection last fall.
Pro: and then there's a great loophole you can use in California . . .
Me, thinking not typing: dammit Pro, STFU you lawnoob, I've been working in litigation longer than I feel like telling you how long, and ... ACCORDINGLY THEREFORE, I think it's important to sit on juries and not be like one of the several lamers in my last panel that was dragging out every lame excuse they could think of to avoid their civic duty, I suppose you lazy ignorant slackers would prefer a police state with no trials, or even trial by religious authority who could hand down a nice stoning verdict, would that make you happier? Although I suppose that the question of whether someone goes free or rots in jail for life is probably best off not in your hands.
Pro: There's a mail order place that has lots of books about things like avoiding jury duty . . .
Me, chatting to a friend whose dad works for the bar association in her state while this is going on: Hey, could you ask your dad to get the lawyer police to bust Pro for giving bad legal advice without a license?
Friend: huh?
I guess it's kinda like how when you run into someone and tell them you play video games and they go "oooooh, I hear those things make little children get hooked on sex and drugs and violence, didn't that crazy guy who shot up his college play a lot of video games?"
Sometimes you just wanna smile and say "that's nice hon" and other times you feel the need to unleash a rant.
Yeah I do type fast. The other day I rekeyed a whole will in about twelve minutes just before the office closed because someone underestimated the power of OCR.
Too bad I wasn't online for that. I would have mentioned that I've always wanted to sit on a jury. I've never been invited to, though.
I think I would be an impartial juror. And I believe the civic duty of sitting on a jury is just as important as the civic duty of voting.
It is too bad that jury duty has such a negative stereotype in the media. You constanly hear jokes about peoples fates resting in the hands of "people too stupid to get out of jury duty."
Yup, I've heard that joke too. I don't blame people for not wanting to deal with the legal system, it's complicated. Sort of like how Paris Hilton's mommy had a little tantrum about her daughter being oppressed by it on her most recent DUI arrest. Mean old courts!
Strangely, a lot of my MMO buddies are lawyers or do something else in the legal field or have family that do. There have been a few in Order, there's Lifa and a couple others that read my blog, and there was a whole law firm in PCL/Order Imperia that used to grind points between depositions and trials. I guess some people enjoy complicated things :)
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