Burnt Orange Report

I darn near live-blogged this, but decided against it. I was astounded by the interview, to say the least...and the most...

The problem with the Ten Commandments is no one reads them. Particularly the ones on display in the courtrooms around the country. "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Something the district attorneys don't seem to mind when it wins them a conviction and the defense attorneys don't seem to mind when it wins them an acquittal. Most attorneys in this country learn rhetoric not as a means of making effective argument but rather how to lie convincingly. Maybe if kids read them in elementary school, they would remember them later in life. Sorry but I agree 100% with him. I'm sick of the "Enron Ethics" that has permeated this country. So are quite a few others.

If you look at his campaign finance report, he has quite a few individuals around the state who are contributing. Power in numbers. And the numbers are there. So don't dismiss his ability to get people to the polls who stopped going to the polls a long time ago. He obviously is getting them to send in those $100 checks. Most of his money seems to be in those $100 checks from average people. Not $1,000 checks from the attorneys and the "fat cats" in the corporate offices. As someone put it just the other day, you not only get who you vote for, you get who they have sold themselves to. The only people Kinky Friedman appears to have sold himself to are average Texans wanting someone to finally represent them instead of the attorneys and the "fat cats" who as we consistently see in the campaign finance reports of the "party candidates" sometimes write $100,00 checks.

If it were between him and Perry, I would take the cokehead over the real dopehead. Sigmund Freud used cocaine for ten years. I don't see anyone dismissing Sigmund Freud because of it.

Kinky needs to write some new jokes. It sounds like he's doing Rip Taylor's material

yeah, the jokes are re-runs every time, but then again he is still encountering new voters and exposure with every interview/program. i heard that Bush used the same stump speech EVERY SINGLE TIME when he was running in 2004. man, those reporters must have been bored to tears.

note: Kinky is on Jay Leno on Wednesday night. note II: Kinky was man enough to admit previous drug use unlike Bush. I'll take someone who speaks the truth over a liar every time.

I recently read a piece (Molly Ivins?) that said the reason so many lawyers were against having the 10 Commandments in courtrooms was because the ones against stealing, adultery, covetousness, and especially bearing false witness created a hostile work environment

And, of course, we all know what happens to a christian when he dies. His tombstone usually reads, 'I wasted all my life believing in that dumb shit and all I got was this lousy decaying corpse in a box six feet under ground'.

I'm about to finish law school, and I don't recall ever seeing a class on rhetoric listed in the course catalog. If anything, law students complain constantly that none of our classes teach us how to word an argument effectively or speak more persuasively.

Want to make lawyers less aggressive in the court room? Then don't make the US legal system an adversarial one. But be willing to give up everything else that goes with it.

And what's up with a champion of the little guy picking on the one group that every politician loves to beat up on - immigrants? Everybody knows that attacking immigrants, illegal or not, is the easiest, cheapest tactic in the world. Immigrants can't vote and almost none of them can donate to campaigns. And what is Mexico supposed to do, ask those families in Plano to stop demanding cheap labor for their well-manicured lawns?

I like the Ten Suggestions idea, however 2 of the 10 are actual laws and the rest are moral suggestions. So there is a problem in either way of giving it a name.

Though I dont ever recall a time when the Ten Commandments were in school, unless Kinky went to a Jewish academy. Or maybe he refers back to the 18th century when the school marm was also preacher's wife? I for one dont care to go back to the past and live in The Village.