Lawyers From The United States

"Secrets have power over us. Only when secrets are revealed can truth be known and freedom brought about."

"I told the reporter that these so-called "peace protesters" were all incipient assassins. Free speech does not embrace any form of physical force, whether passive or active. A mob blocking the streets is using physical force and is not the same thing as protected free speech. People who are willing to resort to any form of physical force (because they are frustrated by the failure of their words to be effective) have progressed up the rungs of the ladder of violence. As each level of this ladder is climbed, history has shown that progressive degrees of physical violence fail to produce a desired political result, and it becomes easier to take the next step. At the top of this ladder is assassination. Cases in point: JFK, MLK, and RFK."

"But success in a military operation always feels short-lived. You shoulder your rifle and move on from there to the next battle."

"As young people, my generation would see a lot of death. I don't think I ever grew accustomed to it. It came in darkness and fervor, by our airplanes, rifles, parachutes, and tanks. But there was something about that first death I experienced the summer of 1939 when I was just eighteen, years before the war, that stayed with me so strongly. Those first few seasons after my father died were dark indeed."

"Back at Toccoa, Easy Company had been led by Captain Herbert Sobel (portrayed in the Band of Brothers miniseries by David Schwimmer). Sobel was known for his excessive strictness, often revoking men's weekend passes for petty infractions and heaping up additional physical training on them during weekends and evenings. He once brought a court-martial against Winters for failing to inspect a latrine. Sobel's extreme training tactics paid off in some ways- he ended up creating a hardened and physically fit company. From all the tough training they received, Easy Company could boast the finest performance record in the regiment. Yet Sobel's men believed he lacked tactical and combat skills. After several of Sobel's noncommissioned officers refused to fight under him, believing him unfit to follow into battle, Sobel was reassigned to the Chilton Foliat Jump School, where he became a parachute instructor for noncombat officers. Lieutenant Thomas Meehan, a transfer from B Company, took over for Sobel. I never met Sobel personally, and it's been controversial as to whether Sobel was truly as inept as the miniseries made him out to be. Sobel's second son, Michael Sobel, has spoken out in his father's defense in recent years, and most veterans I know respect Michael for doing that. My good friend Don Malarkey, who was with Easy Company from the beginning, insists that Sobel had his good points. Sobel's contributions helped mold Easy Company into the formidable fighting force it came to be."

"Paratroopers capture the attention of people due to the fact that we jumped out of planes. But we didn't have it as hard, for instance, as the guys in the 1st or 4th or 29th divisions, who were grinding it out day after day in Europe, many of whom were not pulled back from the line to England after thirty days like we were. Or beyond that, the poor guys who served in the Pacific. I wouldn't have traded with the guys in the Pacific for anything. None of them got the recognition we did."

"Sometimes the greatest signs of strength are demonstrated when you relive the hardest parts of your life. I'm not a man easily given to emotion. I hate to cry. Yet there are three things that cause me to tear up today. One is when I talk about the love I have for America. The second I'll tell you about later in this book. The third is whenever I remember by dad's suicide."

"The life I've led has only been made possible because I'm an American. The astounding people I've met along the way, the astonishing experience I've had, and the amazing opportunities I've been given have far exceeded anything I could have ever hoped for or expected."

"In those first few days and weeks after the suicide, everyone we talked to was as shocked as we were. To this day nobody is sure what caused him to do it. I can only guess it was attributable to his sense of failure in overcoming the alcohol problem. The booze and the secrecy around it always caused chafing between him and my mother and me. I still bear a lot of guilt because of my conduct. What might I say to my father if I could? I'd say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't more respectful. I'm sorry I wasn't a better son. I'm sorry I didn't treat him with the warmth I should have in spite of his drinking problem. Certainly his good qualities far outweighed what few bad things he did with his liquor- especially considering today's atmosphere. What he did was so minor. So, yeah, I owe him a hell of an apology."

"As some are drawn to bars and others to churches, I’m drawn to bookstores and libraries. They’re sanctuaries. They’re sanctuary. Hope germinates in me that osmosis will take place and whatever goodness is in those books that got them a place on those shelves will leak into me and I’ll produce something that could someday go there."

"They provide relief. Sometimes, it’s the relief of the same genre as what we find in a church sanctuary when the minister ascends to the pulpit and late-morning sunlight is blasting through the windows behind him to gild him and the congregants before you as the choir reaches the climax of the doxology. Sometimes, it’s the relief of a kind yet somehow firm-and-gentle hand at the back of the neck, kneading away not sorrow but the loneliness that can attend it. Sometimes, it’s the relief of discovering you’re no longer bound by the laws of gravity and that, yes, you can actually fly. Sometimes, it’s an answer. Stories do all of these things for us. I’m convinced we’d be utterly lost without them."

"…The idea of police forces as little more than white militia employed to ensure a certain social stratification highlighted just how temporally ever-present police brutality is in American history. And I wanted to capture the intergenerationality of the national paroxysms, embodied in the riots and protests that followed so many of these killings."

"… I was wary of engaging in any sort of savior complex; the incarcerated are most qualified to speak about their own experiences, but I wanted to tell people some of what I saw and heard and read about in these places. I had to get it out of me. And, given my time in law school and as a legal professional who has dealt in these systems, I felt I had the kind of background that was needed to do this telling. This wasn't a faceless black mass I was trying to humanize, these were specific stories I needed to get out of me and felt were especially compelling…"

"I hate it here. Everything's so—' She searches for a word that will tell Mama how violent it always is or how much she hates having to hide in the closet every time it even looks like gangbangers might roll through...--"

"(Part I paragraph 1)"

"The Devil is busy here...The gangs, the drugs, all the evil that men do to each other here. Sometimes even..."

"(Part I paragraph 4)"

"Legal intervention costs money; legal intervention opens up new avenues for abuse, including totalitarian excesses by government officials who seek to determine preferences on personal matters."

"Epstein says that there are six or seven simple rules, depending on when he is counting. The basic six are "self-ownership, or autonomy; first possession; voluntary exchange; protection against aggression; limited privilege for cases of necessity; and takings of property for public use on payment of just compensation" (p 53). The seventh rule is that if there is to be redistribution to the poor it must be financed by flat taxes (p 148)."

"Richard Epstein's book, Takings: Private Property and the Power of the Eminent Domain, is the bible of the "ownership society" of the cowboy capitalists of the 21st century. It is also the bible of judges like Clarence Thomas and Antonio Scalia who have used Epstein's philosophy of takings to undo the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and alter laws based on the public trust doctrine. The problem with Locke and Epstein is that they are blind to the takings by colonizers, cowboys, and corporations, they elevate property created through theft of the commons into a sacred category, defining all attempts to protect the common good as a taking for which the original "takee" must be compensated."

"You just don’t know anything about anything. You’re a journalist. Would you like to compare your résumé to mine?"

"You know nothing about the subject but are so confident that you’re going to say that I’m a crackpot"

"The problem to which the eminent domain clause is directed is that of political obligation and organization. What are the reasons for the formation of the state? What can the state demand of the individuals citizens whom it both governs and represents?"

"I like to think that the poem is trying to hit you in the gut. I like to think that the poem comes from someplace [of] deep and intense emotion and [is] this thing that I can't run away from..."

"…I like to think that I'm just part of the struggle because we all sort of exist in this thing, trying to figure out what it means to be human day-to-day and what it means to have, like, suffered and made other people suffer."

"…You consciously weave certain things in. Then some things are unconsciously woven into the book, both because you write one poem at a time but also because the motivations for each poem exist within the world of that poem. They subconsciously transcend the world of that poem and go to other places…"

"…it’s really easy to get caught up in how you’re hurt and not really think about whom you are actually hurting. At football games, they kneel, but they’re not kneeling for domestic violence in the NFL. They’ve had a huge rate of domestic violence, intensely physical domestic violence that has become public, and you know that’s the tip of the iceberg. That’s not even talking about accusations of sexual assault. It’s not talking about the actual murdering. This is part of the culture where men, who have been professional athletes, have done things. We don’t talk about that. They aren’t kneeling for that."

"It might feel safer to stay hidden away, but safer is not always better. We all have things to say. Learning how to speak up helps us feel valued and a part of the community. And by honing our voices, we can change the world."

"My parents never overtly pushed us to marry Chinese (in fact, my dad was an equal opportunity dater in his time). However, they always encouraged us to value our Chinese-ness. It was never something to be ashamed of. I grew up in a very Chinese American household; Mom cooked Chinese food almost every night, yet she loved her French cooking classes. We all played multiple classical instruments, but were also avid Broadway fans."

"I just did not feel like there were any Asian women out there who I could identify with…I thought it was our role to be quiet and that people would look down on me if I ever spoke out."

"I think the “young adult” age is such a critical period of our lives. Young adults are still young enough to dream of magic and possibility, yet old enough to think for themselves and to begin to make real change in the world."

"Books, words, were my most treasured escape. I lived inside stories, I breathed them. I felt like they made me more human, or a better human…"

"It was an interesting phenomenon, being of mixed race, especially in the eighties. And actually, things haven’t changed all that much, because people still don’t like to talk about race. The inhibition around discussing racism and what it means to be a person of color in this country is profound. Growing up, there was no space to talk about racism. If anyone brought that up at school, suddenly that person was a troublemaker. And as a mixed race kid who had a lot of mixed race friends, if anyone talked about racism we were held up like little trophies. Literally, people would point to us and ask, “How can there be racism? Look at all these biracial kids running around. How is there racism when we see a melting pot?” We were the biological representatives of a post-racial society, and that created an incredible silencing effect…"

"For the most part, romance novels are stories about women finding and taking up space for themselves. And not just taking up space, but daring to find happiness. And yes, romance novels are about the fantasy—the heterosexual fantasy—of having the perfect relationship with a man, but it’s also about women taking power over their sexuality, women taking control over their lives, women making themselves vulnerable to all the intimacies of love…"

"Monstress, however, was the product of many different ideas; my grandmother’s experience of the Japanese occupation of China, for example, my desire to explore what it is to be monstrous. But it also had to do with women—more precisely the representation of women."

"I realized I was thinking about fiction two-dimensionally. When I’m writing comics, I’m also visualizing how the story will look on the page—not even always art-wise, but panel-wise, like how a moment will be enhanced dramatically by simply turning a page and getting a reveal. It requires thinking about story in a way I never had to consider when I was writing prose."

"Female rage is not really permitted in real life. Angry women are called bitches, too emotional, hysterical, whereas male rage is often portrayed as heroic, righteous, intelligent. In Monstress, Arcanics wear collars around their necks to keep them from exercising their full selves. And I think one of the collars around the necks of women is society’s views about female rage. Which isn’t to say anger is necessarily a force for good. Rage can be energizing and sustaining, but it’s ultimately problematic if it doesn’t lead you to a deeper exploration of the source…"

"I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don't know how to do that."

"No wonder old graybeards of the New Jersey bar are shaking their heads in amazement over the woman's feat! NO wonder New York lawyers are asking each other about this enterprising young person! She is rather worth thinking about."

"Linde’s jurisprudence sparked a national movement to revive judges’ interest in the constitutions of American states. State courts, Linde said, should construe their state’s constitution first before diving into the Supreme Court’s federal case law; a state constitutional text might make a federal ruling unnecessary. Linde left the bench nearly two decades ago, but his “first things first” approach lives on. Perhaps the most important legacy of the Linde years were his opinions interpreting Oregon’s free-speech guarantee much more broadly than the federal First Amendment. That protection has helped preserve Oregon’s wide-open democratic culture, where ideas from the Neanderthal to the utopian can contend, and where human experience comes in many shades. That very culture, I suspect, is what has drawn out-of-state fascist leaders to focus on Portland. From years of study—and personal experience—I know about Oregon’s dark racist past and the shadow it casts over the state today. Nonetheless, in recent years, leaders here have worked to create an inclusive culture—one that the fascists would like to discredit, stigmatize, and eventually destroy."

"Since the Saturday demonstration, the Proud Boys have announced that they will be back every month until the City suppresses the antifa movement, whom they call “domestic terrorists.” The impudence is striking. The Proud Boys are threatening violence to achieve political change. That is the textbook definition of terrorism. Moreover, even before Charlottesville, domestic terrorism had emerged as a danger from people motivated by the far-right ideology—that is, from the political forces (if not the actual individuals) now demanding that the government crush their enemies so that they can own the streets. Consider a very partial list of horrendous crimes motivated by right-wing racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism: a mass killing at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina; pipe bombs sent to public figures who oppose Donald Trump; a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue; and 20 people—mostly Latino—gunned down at an El Paso Walmart."

"I haven’t seen Justice Hans Linde in more than a decade, but I thought of him last Saturday, when I found myself locked in a science museum with frightened parents and children while thugs marched by. Hans was a child in Weimar Germany; I suspect he would have known how I was feeling. The museum was the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, in Portland. The occasion was a rally organized by the , an all-male group that exalts “Western values” and promotes Islamophobia. Other affiliated groups joined in—a loose conglomeration of racists, chauvinists, and just plain thugs. Some of them were connected to the in , two years ago, at which a marcher drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman named . The Proud Boys aren’t from Portland, but they have selected the Rose City as the site for their rallies, threats, and clashes with local “antifa,” or activists. The rally Saturday was nominally to demand that Portland suppress the antifa groups so that the Proud Boys can march unopposed whenever they choose. [...] What has this to do with Hans Linde? Hans was born in 1924 to a prosperous Jewish family in Berlin. He once told me that his first clear memory was of watching from the family apartment while Nazis in brown shirts brawled with Communists on the below. When Jewish life in Germany became untenable, the Lindes relocated to Denmark, and then, by good fortune, obtained U.S. visas. The Lindes settled in Portland; Hans attended Oregon public schools, and then Reed College, in the city’s Eastmoreland neighborhood. He served in the Army, attended law school at UC Berkeley, and began a brilliant career as a U.S. Supreme Court clerk, a Senate aide, a law professor, and finally the greatest justice ever to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court. I came to know Linde because, many years ago, I wrote a profile of him."

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge....No one has a right to become an American who isn't born here as an American."

"Watched the clip again and would like to reiterate that Ken Cuccunnelli is a racist who doesn’t understand the first thing about America."

"What you may not know is that last year, in its finite wisdom, the D.C. City Council passed a new law, or a triumph of animal rights over human health, where those pest control people you suggested they bring in aren’t allowed to kill the rats. They have to relocate the rats and not only that — that’s actually not the worst part — they cannot break up the families of the rats. Now, as actual experts in pest control will tell you, if you don’t move an animal at least 25 miles, it’ll come back. And so what’s the solution to that? Well, cross a river....Anyway, it is worse than our immigration policy — you can’t break up rat families. Or raccoons or all the rest and you can’t even kill them. It’s unbelievable."

"Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, the third paragraph, lists some things that the states can do and under certain circumstances. And it says that no state shall enter into war without the permission of Congress unless they are actually invaded. Well, here it comes. And there are several interesting aspects of that.First of all, we’ve been being invaded for a long time and so the border states clearly qualify here to utilize this power themselves. And what’s interesting is they don’t need anyone’s permission. They can do it themselves. And because they’re acting under war powers, there’s no due process. They can literally just line their National Guard up with, presumably with riot gear like they would if they had a civil disturbance and turn people back at the border. Literally, you don’t have to keep them, no catch and release, no nothing. You just point them back across the river and let them swim for it. Maybe you have a little courtesy shuttle and drive them over and leave them there. And the states can do that, interestingly enough, and the federal government can’t. But it really becomes a question of do they want to utilize this power or not....When someone comes across your border without your permission, it’s an invasion. Their purpose here is to violate the border, to violate our sovereignty, for their own purposes. That’s an invasion. And here, I don’t think with the caravan it’s even debatable because you’ve got an entire group that’s organized itself to come into the country."

"Ken Cuccinelli just gave the game away. Racism is the point of their policy."

"Listening to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) speak is like having a real life history lesson. Mr. Conyers is the second-longest serving member of Congress, having been in office for nearly 50 years. After participating in the March on Washington in 1963, he entered Congress in the middle of the fight for civil rights and, as a leading civil rights activist himself, has played a key role in passing, protecting and expanding the our nation’s most vital civil rights laws. Today is the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This landmark law made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, and gender. It began to provide equal opportunities in areas like employment, voting, public accommodations, and education. Many know it better as the law that integrated lunch counters and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to protect American workers from discriminatory workplace practices."

"The idea to memorialize [Martin Luther] King's birth was raised the same year he died (1968), by Congressman John Conyers, Jr., a Michigan Democrat. It faced immediate resistance. The economic cost of a day off work was cited by some; a Republican committee said that "the establishment of a public holiday to honor a private citizen would be contrary to our country's long-standing tradition.""

"The push to celebrate Martin Luther King with a national holiday became a political movement in itself... In 1982, [Stevie] Wonder, together with King's widow Coretta Scott King, presented Congress with the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history, with six million signatures supporting the national holiday. Conyers had continued to raise the bill at every Congress since 1968, and it eventually passed in a 338 to 90 vote in 1983. President Ronald Reagan finally signed off on the bill in November that year, despite having previously spoken out against the holiday."