It never ends:

The nursing home industry, lending new meaning to the term audacious, is pushing legislation to limit its liability in Tennessee courts at a time when violations for neglect and abuse of residents are higher than ever before. It may seem outrageous to many, but inside Tennessee’s ethically challenged legislature, the measure’s chances of passage are better than even.

When I first blogged here in 2003, I advocated against limiting liability in medical malpractice cases. We've seen over the last five years that the only group that has benefited from that spate of legislation has been Big Insurance. Now, the "forces of darkness" are at it again, trying to screw the old and infirm by sliding this legislation through with lots of cash and legislative insider connections. They're even using the same threat: protect our profits or we may have to close nursing homes.

Anyone who wants to register their opinion with their legislator can locate him/her here.

UPDATE: Comment below: "I notice you haven't jumped into either the medical profession or the nursing home business but instead have chosen, ahem, to be a lawyer." It's funny, that comment. I keep saying, when I see some other type of work that is really lucrative, "I picked the wrong line of work again!" Seriously, though, regardless of whether I decided decades ago to be a lawyer, a doctor, or a nursing home proprietor [and who tells mommy and daddy when they're groing up, "I want to be a nursing home operator when I grow up!"], that does not excuse a doctor when he screws up, or a nursing home when it maltreats its residents.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I love all the folks that bash trial lawyers. They're the same people for whom trial lawyers are their best friends, when they need help.

YET MORE TO SAY: I do have to say this to the commenter who said that consumer law benefits lawyers always, but consumers only sometimes. Unless the comenter is referring to insurance defense lawyers who defend cases by the hour, that statement is just not true. I handle most or all of such cases on a contingent fee, i.e., I make no fee unless the client recovers. Thus, the client will make a recovery before I get paid. It's just a terrible distortion of the way things really are to paint all trial lawyers as profiting while their clients are losing. In my practice, and every other trial lawyer I know and respect, that just ain't the case. Like it or not, most trial lawyers are in this business to make a living by helping people solve their problems. Putting aside the top 1 or 2% of the lawyers who make the big money in the plaintiff's bar, most of us work for very modest wages. Frankly, what is extraordinary to me is what the big firms are paying the top 1 or 2% of law school graduates these days -- $150,000 and up. Now that's obscene [and how do I get some of that?]!

Surprise! Study: Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves

I've been using Canon single-ink cartridges for several years, and the nice thing about the Canon cartridges is that they are clear; You can visually confirm they are empty. So I ignore the low ink warnings, which do start up many, many pages before the out-of-ink message flashes. And when that message comes up, I can see that the particular color is, in fact, empty.

Crisis? What Crisis: Malpractice Rebate for Md. Set at $84 Million

Maryland's Republican Governor in 2004 called the legislature into a special session to push through the subsidy, based on hysterical premium increases and threats that doctors would have to stop working in the state. Overreaction? History suggests exactly that.

Note that Maryland's Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society planned to pay two-thirds of the rebate to the state and one-third to the physician shareholders of Medical Mutual, despite the fact that the surplus funds were generated by a taxpayer-financed subsidy. While the new Maryland Insurance Commissioner has mandated that all the rebate go to the state, guess who remains screwed: you guessed it, the taxpayers who had to pay it out in the first place.

I'm glad I don't live in Maryland any more.

It has bothered me for some years how the Republicans and right-wing types have been referring to the other party as "the Democrat Party" in a perjorative fashion. Now it bothers me even more. According to Marty Peretz, the practice hasn't been used in half a century, and was a product of Joe McCarthy "who, with his twisted mouth often oozing the charming brew of beer and saliva, would snarl out the words "Democrat Party," as if they referred to vermin."

Boy, that'd make me proud, if I were a Repub.

Resports -- largely unreported -- of routine torture in U.S. facilities in Afghanistan:

When Captain Carolyn Wood assumed control of the prison in the summer of 2002--she ran it until taking over Abu Ghraib a year later--interrogation tactics came to include beatings, anal violation with sharp objects, blows to the genitals, and "peroneal" strikes (an incapacitating blow to the leg with a baton, a knee, or a shin). We know about these tactics because an internal Army investigation into two prisoner deaths was obtained by The New York Times. These detainees--a 22-year-old taxi driver and the brother of a Taliban commander--were found dead and hanging from the wrists by shackles. A coroner's report said the two men died after being subjected to dozens of peroneal strikes. According to the coroner's report, the "pulpified" legs of one of the corpses looked as if they had "been run over by a bus."

Dammit, that's not who we are, or need to be. At least, so I thought.

Sad news from Grand Cayman. Back in August 2006, I got a chance to dive with a Grand Cayman policeman named Paul, who was from England. Last weekend, he was hit by a car and critically injured. My thuoghts and prayers go out to him and his family. My log of that August 2006 dive follows:

Got a 3d dive for this day. I hooked up with Paul, a CI policeman from London originally. He's been here about 9 months, I believe. He's a good diver, and blows his air even faster than me! We surface swam out to the far buoy, and dropped down on the Nicholson, a sunken landing craft that I last dove in 2003. Right next to the Nicholson was a half eaten carcass of a nurse shark; the rear was intact, but everything in front of the dorsal fin was eaten away. All I could see was the white fibrous tissue.

On the Nicholson, we swam into the small cabin toward the stern, and then up and out through a hatch above us. A close fit; I took it real easy going up through it.

Then it was a short swim to the mermaid. From the bow of the Nicholson, we swam at a 10:00 angle. Some fish were hovering around me, and wouldn't be shooed away. Strange. Then I felt a gentle nip under my left arm on my torso. A grouper or red snapper had actually nipped at me! That was a first for my 80 or so dives in GC. A grey angelfish and one of those yellow trimmed jacks were also getting too close for comfort. I spend some energy paying attention to them and trying to get them away from me, because they were FOLLOWING me. Territorial, or just looking for a food handout, I don't know.

We got to the mermaid, and it was again an anti-climax. As we left the mermaid, the fish finally laid off. We swam back toward the ladder with Pau leading. I think he thought I was short on air [I wasn't], and we avoided the rain, which had started and stopped while we were down. A good dive, except for the aggressive fish!

This news only underscores the new philosophy I've been trying to inculcate: Carpe the diem; you never know what's going to happen tomorrow, or the next week, or the next month.

Glenn has posted at times on red light traffic cameras. Courtesy of the Howard Stern Show [he doesn't endorse, he just reports], here's a product that defeats the camera system. Seems a good way to thwart the inevitable mistakes these automated systems make. And by the way, how does one cross-examine an automated camera, if one contests one of these tickets?

Is this Photoblocker spray legal? Who knows? I recommend you speak with your jurisprudential professional before using it, though

All of a sudden, conservatives everywhere are shocked, SHOCKED, at Ann Coulter. While I agree wholeheartedly with Sean Hackbarth's sentiments, I nevertheless must say, "too little, too late." As one of the commenters to the linked open letter said, this invective is nothing new for Coulter. Like it or not, she is one of the leading faces of the conservative movement.

You lie down with dogs, and you get up with fleas.

Well, I've started an entirely new blog, called FlickMaven.com. Certain distinguished bloggers -- clearly sick to death of listening to my off-the-cuff movie, TV and media reviews -- suggested that I do a blog containing all those (ha!) controversial views. So go link. Enjoy. Click through. Etc.