2.1% is a "fucking avalanche?" Had she won the electoral college, she would have tied Jimmy Carter at 39th place in terms of margin of victory.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/...

That's not an avalanche, regardless of vulgar qualifier. It is not a landslide. It is a narrow margin, and ranks up there with the narrowest in U.S. history. Let's not distort the facts any further, okay?

Not trying to be too pedantic, but what you are likely saying is that they cannot fight for "employment at will laws," which permit the free termination of employment by either party. The so-called "right to work" laws prevent a labor union from forcing you to join the union when you work in a union shop. These laws have nothing to do with employment at will. And, for my two cents, I agree with your sentiments. If employers enjoy being able to fire people without notice or severance, why should they expect a de facto two week severance period from employees?

Under what analysis could one claim racing "drones" is irresponsible relative to racing full size cars and aircraft? If a DJI Phantom 2 goes down in a crowd, it doesn't sever body parts and kill seven people.

To me, the interesting part of this is that the buttons for the items are tied to a specific item from a specific brand (yes, you can choose the quantity, but that's it). So Amazon not only uses this to tie you into to buying from them, but to buying a specific brand of a specific item. For example, now when you think "I need to buy detergent," and you use the button, you buy Tide from Amazon. Not Gain, not All, not any other brand. Just that one brand. And if you elect to continue using the button to avoid the hassle and choice, you're locked in to your first brand selection (assuming there are competing brands with buttons). You don't even see the competing products on the shelf or the website anymore.

It's brilliant. I'm surprised they have such a limited number of partners in this venture so far as these pre-configured buttons rob you of two choices.

I use a Vera3 z-wave based system. The light switches I've installed are the GE branded Zwave units. A few are dimmers. All of them have full manual functionality. Press the switch, lights go on. Press it again, they go off. On the dimmers, you hold the button down, either direction, to adjust light level. Any idiot could get it to work, and without the use of a phone.

I have a pair of thermostats that tie-in to the system as well. Again, they work via manual input. You can create schedules on the thermostats themselves. You can turn on heat, or cold, or set a temperature on the thermostat. If the Vera3 disappeared from the house, they'd keep working just fine.

I have a pair of locks that are zwave controlled. The keypads work independently of the system if they need to. The actual lock works with the keys I have. Without the Vera3, they keep working.

I fail to see the issue.

This device, which has yet to be released, kind of reminds me of the thinking behind this. Except they took it a step further, made both independently moving sides into mice as well. The price is a bit steep for my liking, though, and it looks like it might have a bit of a learning curve.

I don't think you understand how this works. Discovery in civil litigation, by its very nature, is reciprocal. Barring one party from engaging in discovery on the other would require some absolutely bizarre, rare, and likely improper order absent an evidence/issue/terminating sanction against a party for engaging in repeated and egregious discovery abuse.

The second comment regarding a libel suit is also wrong. Truth is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation, and is routinely asserted by defendants in such cases. Therefore, discovery that would tend to establish the truth of the statements made by the accused defendant is absolutely relevant. It is absolutely the time for the defendant to "play detective" to prove the veracity of their comments.

I am a lawyer, but this does not mean we now have an attorney-client relationship, this is not legal advice, so on, so forth.

That isn't entirely the end of it, though. Where the formation of the corporation is little more than a sham, one can "pierce the corporate veil" to target specific tortfeasors within the entity. There are a whole host of different factors that must be proven by a plaintiff attempting to do so, so I won't speculate on whether any particular factor would apply here.

That being said, the corporate defense appears to be an effort to distance themselves from the legal requirements applicable to a government agency. So if they claim to be immune to FOIA requests, I assume they would agree that sovereign immunity and the need to proceed through a 1983 action against their members in Federal court are equally inapplicable?

Law school textbooks are among the worst when it comes to actual value. The majority of such books are typically known as "case books" because they simply contain abridged versions of legal opinions selected by the author(s). There is minimal interstitial text, usually a few pointless questions that are supposed to cause a law student to think about the legal implications in greater detail. These are routinely skipped when briefing the case and integrating the same into an outline for study before the one great test of the semester. They are wholly useless books outside the confines of law school as the cases they present are abridged, and often times presented simply to show the historical development of the law. Selling them to other law students at the end of the course was the only way to recoup any sort of value from the texts at all. The promise of receiving a digital copy to keep at the end is meaningless because the value of the book is non-existent once the course concludes. And the publisher knows it, hoping the promise of a digital copy will forestall claims of first sale doctrine violation. I had just two instructors who didn't buy into the law textbook scam. They provided us with a series of legal cites to cases and Code sections that we should review, knowing full well we could pull them off of Westlaw/Lexis Nexis (or, these days, Google Scholar) to review. Both of these instructors taught the most informative, interesting, and useful courses I had in all three years of law school, all without the extra $120 fee for a useless collection of partial cases. I wish more professors followed suit with these guys, who were both active lawyers and not full time professors.