John asks if this is a just punishment?#

A judge ordered a woman to carry a photo of the man she killed in a head-on collision, and the man's parents complied by sending a picture of him in his casket. Now, her lawyer is crying foul and the family is refusing to provide another picture.

The woman, incidentally, killed the man while she was driving drunk and talking on a cell phone. She doesn't want to carry the picture of the man she killed because he's in the casket; she assumed the picture would be of him while he was alive, and carrying the picture of him in the casket would be cruel and usual punishment. Says the dead man's mom: "I thought it was cruel and unusual to kill my son."

Suppose you're the judge in the case. Read the story (there's also more background information here) and then tell me what you would do. Should the woman in the case be made to carry the casket picture?

I wonder if people who support this would be supportive of the US government distributing pictures of dead Iraqi and Afghani bodies to Americans. Would they go to all Americans? Voters? or, just the bureaucrats?

If we were to extend this further, maybe there should be a picture of the slaughtered animal outside every package of meat, or the raped cow on each bottle of milk.

Lawrence Lessig writes about Supreme Court Judges.#

In my view, perhaps the best sitting justice is a Republican appointee — Stevens. And if candidates are looking for what makes the best the best, then it is certainly his judges' judge-like character. There's no simple line that predicts Justice Stevens' result — certainly not a political line. And if there is any quality this Court needs, it is that — following a line that does not seem a political line.

The most impressive judges not sitting on the Supreme Court are also, um, Republicans. (What party am I again?) [...] But I doubt that this is the time that a President from either party will pick greatness as the reason to select a Justice.

Richard links to Andrew on being a nice guy.#

I've always been at the listening end of girls when they came to talk about relationship and dating problems, and what I can't help notice, that no matter how many times they come and tell me exactly what they want, when I see them with their so-called boyfriends, it's not what they want. When they are with the asshole type of guy, they will constantly complain but never do anything to get themselves out of that situation. I know that each of these girls who come to me complaining, have at least one guy in their life that fits what they're looking for. But unfortunately, they only see this guy as a friend because they don't have that bad boy attitude girls fall for in the early years of dating life.