Law And More

The New York Times - When It Wasn't Winning It Was Almost Human

"Like a burning sun that never sets, the New York Times is forever there, forever reminding us of its presence, and forever neglecting to give adequate recognition to the rays of light emitted by lesser stars." - Jack Shafer, Politico, May 23, 2022

The New York Times was almost human when it wasn't winning. Remember that. Thought leaders were speculating that some foundation would take it over. At the time it wasn't getting the hang of digital and didn't seem really to understand that was a must-do. Meanwhile the rest of us were sweating about page views. Making a living depended on it. That's what we knew. 

That was then.

Now, as Shafer documents, that it's totally back it is again totally unlikable. Although I have paid subscriptions to a growing list of media outlets, I refuse to align myself with The New York Times.

The tone of The Times articles is one of ownership. Not accidentally readers get the feeling that this is the definitive word on topic X or topic Y. Maybe that's the game plan. Like the Roman Catholic Church, The New York Times seems to gaslight us that it is infallible. 

Most annonying, of course: Its long-termers like David Brooks verbalize as if they were sun gods. All the world is supposed to turn to those worlds with adulation. 

Maybe Shafer's observations, along with the growing number of nasty tweets, can break the spell. After all, Roman Catholism continues to lose global market share. At one time it had been one of the most powerful and during brands.

Connect with humber Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

San Diego Diocese - Unsealed, like Bridgeport, CT Diocese, only more previous unknowns

When the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut finally unsealed the 12,000+ pages of discovery documents from the alleged clergy sex abuse settlements, there weren't many surprises.  It's a very different situation as the San Diego Diocese releases about 10,000 documents.  Last Friday, a Superior Court judge ruled they could be made public.

Those records, reports Gillian Flaccus in HuffingtonPost.com, "show the diocese knew about abusive priests, starting decades before any allegations became public, and that some church leaders shuffled priests from parish to parish or overseas despite credible complaints against them." Flaccus adds that one of those priests - Gustavo Benson - is still a practicing clergy in the Diocese of Ensenada, Mexico.

The website BishopAccountability.org, operated by Terry McKiernan, collects and publishes such documents which have been released as a result of litigation.

Everyone Pray for Hitchens Day

Well he isn't suing them. At least not for now.  I might.  I believe in the voodoo of other people's prayers.  They can cast a spell, one I find unwelcome and might try to prove illegal.

Christopher Hitchens had decided to simply pass on attending the Everyone Pray for Hitchens Day and not to do anything about it.  His take is that it might make others feel better to pray for him so let it be. 

However, if those prayers do start affecting his field of force he might consider filing a complaint to stop them.  Hitchens, who is dying of cancer, published GOD IS NOT GREAT. 

My Life as a Witch - What Christine O'Donnell missed

Obviously the Wicca flap Christine O'Donnell put in play is one for Christopher Hitchens to sort out for us.  As only his laser-like analysis, along with a spot of sarcasm, can, he can clarify what Wicca is.  For instance, is it treated as a religion and is it given all the special legal and tax treatments religions have? 

About 20 years, the in crowd - and in depended on what crowd you were part off - became fascinated with alternate religions or spiritual programs. It was a lot like when the Beatles went searching.  Those of us who bumped into WICCA found that it had a lot of the familiar mysticism of our old Roman Catholic days and the Christian notions of doing onto others as you have done onto yourself.  In Wicca a fundamental is that the good we do returns to us thrice and the bad four times.  We read the books of Laurie Cabot and regarded Salem, Massachusetts as our Jerusalem.  

But closer to my Connecticut home was Curious Goods in West Haven, which provided weekly witch lessons. sort of like the weekly ballet lessons we had as kids.  To us over-educated, the access to magic was the pull force.  I loaded up on just the right color candle to light how when I needed inspiration writing.

Some of us stayed.  Still, I go to Angelica of the Angels in Salem, MA for readings from witches.  The latest was by Demetrius who confirmed that I was an old soul.  He taught he how to cut the cord to the past which was tethering me to regret.  It worked.   Now my spiritual life is all about the lightness of being - one which I can bear.

More of us kept one foot in Wicca and then pushed on to explore Buddhism.   Given me, it's amazing I didn't wind up in a monastery in Tibet.  What kept me anchored has probably been my animal companions. Their immune systems wouldn't hold up in another environment.

What can anyone get from Wicca or Buddhism?  A way out of being stuck.  Then they can take it from there.  That there is what we put together.

Smoking Koran, Bible - Not by minister but a lawyer

Lawyers, of all people, should know the implications of actions, especially those broadcast on the media.  It is a lawyer, not a minister, who wound up "smoking" the koran and the bible.  That was done on a 12-minute YouTube clip by Australian attorney Alex Stewart.  Once the media attention came, the clip had been taken down.

Stewart is employed by Queensland University of Technology.  The employer has noted through a spokesperson that it's not happy with this behavior by an employee.

"Under God" - "Freedom From Religion Foundation v. U.S."

Last Thursday's arguments in "Freedom From Religion Foundation v. U.S." in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are just one of several such complaints filed about the constitutionality of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. 

The issue is whether that phrase is a religious one or has it simply become a standard way of acknowledging the philosophy that we citizens have inalienable rights.  I wonder if Christopher Hitchens, author of GOD IS NOT GREAT, submitted an amicus brief.

When I was blogging the Rhode Island lead paint trial I was stunned every morning that court opened up formally with mention of a divine deity.  I found that high-handed.  This issue of prayer in general came up this week when all hell broke loose here in Connecticut. The Hartford City Council [great timing] announced that in September it would invite local imams to deliver Islamic invocations before the meeting.  I did an article pronto on that for PAJAMAS MEDIA - which you can read here.

Those I interviewed picked up right away on the prayer per se.  Most didn't take it on but rather went sideways and indicated that if there is prayer then those leading it should represent all religions and spiritual groups.  Yeah, rotate.   

Catholic Church: Time for a truth and reconciliation commission

When Gerald Ford was struggling with the decision to pardon Richard Nixon, other nations were beginning to experiment with truth and reconciliation commissions.  Those might have convinced Ford to compromise on points of law in order to bring about healing.  Those commissions would culminate in the attempt to bring South Africa into a post-apartheid state of being.

Now, establishing that kind of commission to deal with the alleged crimes against the people by the Catholic Church seems overdue.  Increasingly, the influential THE ECONOMIST keeps reporting in detail on the activities, present and past, of the Catholic Church.  It will be interesting to read the feelings of the people in Britain when the Pope comes to visit.  Sure Susan Boyle is going to sing at the mass he will celebrate but there is also the Greek Chorus which chants that he should be arrested when he sets foot in Britain.  Author Christopher Hitchens was a prime mover on that before his illness.

It was Hitchens who took on the supposed saintliness of Mother Teresa, an identity the Knights of Columbus here in New Haven, Connecticut still celebrate.  Recently there had been a high-profile exhibit hosted by the Knights.  The organization's dollars and energy might have been better invested cleaning up crime in New Haven, where I was mugged and my car stolen.

Should it be law firm Motley Rice, which sued so many corporations for causing a public nuisance, that takes on the Catholic Church for that same kind of offense.  At the very least, Mother Teresa et al. contributed to a public nuisance with the ban on birth control.  At the very worst, they killed trust in authority.  What parent will allow their sons or daughter to be alone with clergy of the Catholic Church.  Here is my eBook on public nuisance, when I was against leveraging that novel legal theory Download Publicnuisancevoodoo.  Now I see it as a perfect fit for figuring out what harm to the common good the Church might have contributed to or actually caused.

BREAKING NEWS:

A recent poll indicates that 77% of Brits don't want taxpayers to foot the 12-million-pound expense for the Pope's visit.  My hunch: This could be a perfect storm for the Catholic Church.

Sins of the Fathers - THE ECONOMIST takes sustained attention

This is not something a beleaguered organization like the Catholic Church wants: a publication as influential as THE ECONOMIST taking a special interest in it  The latest in its coverage, THE ECONOMIST reports the cover-up in Ireland.  And it's always the cover-up, not what so much what had transpired.

Way back in 1972, the IRA bombed the village of Claudy.  Nine died. Evidence pointed to Catholic priest Father James Chesney as the leader.  His superior William Conway, who now heads the church in Ireland, had the priest transferred, much like was done with the pedophile priests.

This finding and its outing in THE ECONOMIST make the pope's coming visit to Britain all the more problematic.  Before he became ill, Christopher Hitchens was championing a campaign that the pope be arrested when he set foot in Britain for his part in the sins of the father.

Even if the pope isn't arrested, RC in U.S./Europe finished

Now here's a business problem to sink your teeth into for your current Roman Catholic clients and for developing new business among prospects which represent RC brands.  That problem is how to make them less vulnerable to everything from lawsuits to hits to their reputation as the RC slides faster and faster into non-existence. 

No lawyers worth their salt are naive.  Clearly, the whole RC edifice, at least in the U.S. and Europe, is crumbling.  In an article in THE ATLANTIC, Ross Douthat posits that even if the pope isn't arrested - remember that lawsuit filed in Oregon - the RC institution as we've known it is finished.  Over.  Distant memory of First Communion dresses and persuading the parish priest to bury our gangster relative in consecrated ground.

In PRACTICE PERSPECTIVES, Jones Day partner Mickey Pohl hammers the necessity of approaching clients's challenges as business problems demanding business solutions, not as legal issues in isolation.  So, get busy with experts in reputation management, fund-raising, etc. to prepare strategies and tactics to present to leaders of Catholic entities such as the Bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

That RC space in Connecticut has had more than its share of legal and brand challenges.  For example, after three abortive trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, it had to open the 12,000+ pages of discovery documents on the clergy sex abuse to the media.  Show how your law firm can prevent further litigation and position it for the post-RC era.  Increasingly, as we know from the unanimous ruling on contingency by the California Supreme Court, public policy issues will trump purely points of law.

Here, you can download free, the address I delivered on ExecSense on how to develop new business through multi-channel marketing Download Rainmaking.

Those quasi-theocratic regimes, including that of the Catholic Church

Influential THE ECONOMIST has had it with the mumbo-jumbo of "those quasi-theocratic regimes" which claim immunity from secular law.  In its current edition, THE ECONOMIST takes on how the Roman Catholic Church tried to cover up clergy sexual abuses against children.  It isn't alone.  The article titled "Calling time on theocracy" notes that throughout Europe, once devout Catholics have decided never again to treat Holy Mother The Church as "untouchable."  Those nations include Germany, Belgium, and Ireland.  Unfortunately, THE ECONOMIST points out, Italy is still on the fence about where God's law and man's law intersect.

Could the Pope go to jail?  That's not impossible, given the U.S. lawsuit against him and other high Vatican leaders that has been found to have merit.