I marvel sometimes at the human capacity for stupidity, or perhaps more accurately, to put one’s stupidity on display for all to see by invoking the protection of the legal system.  A colleague of mine once defended a personal injury lawsuit brought by an individual who claimed paralysis as the result of an accident.  When my attorney friend (a martial arts enthusiast) saw a familiar name among the competitors at a full-contact karate tournament, he decided to gather a little evidence with his camcorder.  At a court-ordered mediation of the case, the supposedly “permanently and totally disabled” plaintiff discovered that a picture can indeed be worth a thousand words when my colleague played the videotape of that plaintiff executing roundhouse kicks, spins, and other karate moves en route to winning that tournament.  Gold medal?  Yes.  Big personal injury settlement?  Not quite.

          Stupidity is, sadly, not a rare commodity in the legal system.  Take Boston firefighter Albert Arroyo, for example.  Mr. Arroyo filed for a disability pension in April of this year as a result of a back injury, and shortly thereafter was successful in getting a doctor to conclude that he was “totally and permanently disabled.”  However, this July he was ordered back on the job by Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser, Jr.  It seems the department learned that, even while he was claiming to be disabled and drawing benefits at taxpayer expense, Mr. Arroyo (a competitive bodybuilder since 2003) had competed in a national bodybuilding competition just days after receiving his disability rating, placing eighth.  Compounding Arroyo’s attempt to put one over on the fire department was the feeble insistence by his physician, Dr. John Mahoney, that despite examining Arroyo 13 times before certifying his “total and permanent” disability, he never noticed Arroyo’s muscular bodybuilder physique.

          One would think that a disgraced, disbarred attorney who had pleaded guilty to having sex with underage girls would do everything possible to avoid the public eye.  But common sense doesn’t appear to be a strong suit of 44 year-old James Colliton, who confessed to statutory rape in October 2007 and was sentenced to three concurrent one year terms.  Colliton, a former attorney with a prominent Manhattan law firm, sued American Express in July, claiming that the credit card company violated its cardholder privacy agreement when it gave law enforcement personnel information that led to his capture.  Colliton had been indicted on charges of having sex with young girls, but then fled and was arrested in February 2006 near Toronto.  American Express had no comment on the lawsuit.  Perhaps Colliton thought he had a different card in his wallet: the Pedophile Express card – don’t leave the country where you’re facing criminal charges without it.

          Maybe Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is not a stupid guy, but he certainly would benefit from a map.  Apparently, Mr. Bruning is not happy with the National Indian Gaming Commission’s (the federal agency that regulates tribal gambling operations) decisions to allow the Ponca Indian tribe to build a casino on 5 acres of land it owns in Carter Lake.  So Bruning decided to do something about it, filing a federal lawsuit in January of this year.  There was just one teeny little problem, as Department of Justice lawyers pointed out in their 26 page response: Carter Lake is in Iowa, not Nebraska.  Allowing Nebraska to challenge activities that occur in Carter Lake, the DOJ lawyers argued, “would essentially make the state boundary irrelevant.”  Bruning has defended his boneheaded quest, stating that “Carter Lake is in a unique geographic location.  You have to go through Nebraska to get there.”  I guess by that logic, Bruning thinks he should be able to weigh in on anything that occurs in any of the states bordering Nebraska.

          Maybe there’s something in the water in Nebraska.  Last fall, state senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit, demanding that the defendant “cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.”  The defendant Sen. Chambers was referring to is God – as in, the Almighty.  Chambers’ lawsuit accuses God of causing “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.”  Sen. Chambers says that his main objective is to bring attention to his belief that everyone is entitled to access to the courthouse, despite attempts by other senators to prohibit the filing of certain kinds of lawsuits.  Sen. Chambers maintains that “anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody – even God.”  There has been no ruling from the judge assigned to the case.  But if lightning just happens to strike Sen. Chambers on the Nebraska Senate floor, let’s just say I won’t be surprised.

          Just to prove that lawyers and politicians haven’t cornered the market on stupidity, I give you Dr. Steven Kirshner, a Philadephia-area board-certified orthopedic surgeon.  In a lawsuit filed in July, Dr. Kirshner is accused of “rubbing a temporary tattoo of a red rose” just below the panty line of a female patient while she was under anesthesia for surgery to repair a herniated disc.  Dr. Kirshner doesn’t deny placing the tattoo, and his lawyer says that in the past he’s left similarly washable marks on patients to lift their spirits.  Despite this, medical ethics experts, like Dr. Art Caplan, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Department of Medical Ethics, point out that “you cannot do something like this even as a joke.”  According to the patient’s attorney, Gregg A. Shivers, she was “extremely emotionally upset” by Dr. Kirshner’s action.

          Gill Switalksi is a British lawyer and former head of legal affairs for financial asset manager Foreign & Colonial (F&C).  She wants a lot of money – 19 million pounds, to be exact – from her former employer, claiming that she had a nervous breakdown, was discriminated against, and is entitled to compensation.  But lawyers for F&C have responded that Ms. Switalkski is hardly the shattered shell of a person that she purports to be.  In fact, they point to the fact that while suffering from this mental illness, Ms. Switalksi successfully interviewed for a job at a rival asset manager.  So what do you do when you’re busted?  If you’re Gill Switalkski, you claim that it was your “alternate personality” that actually got the job.   Apparently, at least one of her personalities is a good interviewer.  Let’s hope for her sake that one of them is also a credible witness.

          Finally, Shannon Kelly really wants to be a lawyer; badly enough to sue the West Virginia Board of Law Examiners for violating his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Mr. Kelly, who graduated from Concord University in West Virginia in 1997, and from Florida’s Barry University School of Law in 2003, maintains that he has learning disabilities and in fact on that basis received extra time to complete exams while in law school.  In 2007, the West Virginia Board of Law Examiners accommodated Kelly with special treatment for the bar exam.  It printed his exam in large, eighteen point type, permitted him a private room to take the test, and even gave him an extra day to finish the exam (normally, the West Virginia exam is administered over 2 days).  But according to Mr. Kelly and his lawyer, this special treatment wasn’t enough, and they say that unless he’s given 4 days in which to take the test, then the “enormous time, money and energy” invested by Kelly to reach the threshold of the legal profession at age 32 will have been wasted.

          Kelly’s lawyer, Edward McDevitt, says that his client “has severe deficits in processing speed, cognitive fluency, and rapid naming.”  I’ve got to wonder – with issues like that, should he really be in the legal profession?  Let’s face it, courts aren’t going to insists that his opponent’s legal briefs and pleadings be written in 18-point type, and judges won’t give him twice as much time during closing arguments or a private room so he can “focus” during trial.  And how many clients will be beating a path to hire a lawyer with such “severe deficits?”

          There’s only one position that I can think of in the legal profession where you can apparently get by with severe deficits in “cognitive fluency.”  Unfortunately, Nebraska already has an attorney general.

John Browning is a partner in the Dallas office of Gordon & Rees, LLP. He may be contacted at:  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

In court of law, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The assumption of innocence notwithstanding, a defendant could be guilty as sin. So the jury follows where the evidence takes it. Eventually a verdict is rendered and read, based upon truth or close approximation discerned from the facts in the case, observations of the experts and witnesses, as well as logical inference and reason applied by people whose responsibility it is. Now say the defendant is finally convicted, found guilty. An appeals process could very well overturn that verdict, even if presumption had shifted to guilt—particularly if new evidence comes to light and new investigative methodologies emerge. For instance, DNA evidence has cleared a number of convicted persons of crimes they didn’t commit. Of course, the fact that an innocent person gets released doesn’t always lead authorities to the real perpetrators of the crime.

Legal and political systems are at least amenable to redress of mistakes made, and one would think that scientific systems of thought are too. After all, no one has yet maintained that where human beings are involved mistakes can’t theoretically happen. Mistakes empirically do occur, in science and every other discipline. As late as 1915, the scientific consensus was that the Milky Way constituted the sum total of the celestial sphere. No one says that a judge or jury is infallible, although some people apparently think a nineteenth century naturalist named Charles Darwin still is. Mistakes are unfortunate and sometimes tragic, but they are forgivable unless we choose to ignore and cover up contrary evidence, insisting as it were upon the erroneous verdict.

DNA is clearing up more than the guilt of people held in prison. It is changing the assumptions glued to science for the last 150 years. People whose responsibility it is to be objective investigators and educators, who cling to the infallibility of Darwin and continue to teach his theory concerning origins of life as if it were unquestionable truth—they are the worst guilty parties. It is in the nature of our political system, however, that free people sufficiently informed, will eventually make changes necessary to curricula and to schools they pay for. Many will also study for the love of truth and the thrill of discovery, replacing old oracles and reinvigorating the scientific quest itself with imagination, free inquiry and renewed analytical rigor.

The central theory in modern biology is still the one Charles Darwin left, and it hasn’t evolved much in the intervening years. It is maintained by bureaucratic control of education and sheer mental inertia, more so than by modern science. In 1821 Darwin went to the Gallapogas islands at the age of 22, stayed there a little over a month to collect his notes and specimens. He then went home to England and thought about what he had found for 25 years before publishing his famous treatise on the origin of species in 1859. In it he argued that all life is the product of undirected natural forces, namely time, chance and natural selection. Natural selection was his substitute for a design or plan, a naturalistic mechanism for producing observed biological changes over a long period of time. Darwin argued simply that physical variations proving advantageous to survival are inherited. The logic requires that whatever gets selected for transmission through genes shows functional advantage in terms of adaptation for survival.

What’s amazing is that the theory, interesting so far as it goes, has been elevated to a stature it never deserved. It is helpful in explaining limited kinds of variation to be sure, but it doesn’t begin to explain the complexity of life itself and it is very hard to imagine how it should have been credited with explaining all life on earth, despite incredible advances in science and technology since his day. For instance, there was very little knowledge of the microscopic worlds when he did his research. Darwin could not begin to see internal workings of cells the way we can today at 50,000 times magnification. Darwin theorized from assumptions about cells and cell activities that have since proven to be false. His theory works from the standpoint of supposed chemical evolution and then simplicity evolving into higher and more complex life forms. He did not address specifically how life could originate from non-living matter. He did not view cells the way we do either, nor understand them as the molecular machines they are, evincing form to fit function; nor could he fathom the irreducible complexity of these veritable marvels of miniaturized engineering. Natural selection cannot be used to construct the complex molecular machines that exist, even the simplest bacterial phlagelum.

Darwin himself wrote that his theory would break down, if you could show multi-component parts and systems of systems in simple cells. Yet today we know that cells consist of thousands of proteins and some forty different protein parts. Further, the proteins are composed of amino acids—some twenty in the human body and 370 others in nature. Sequences of hundreds of amino acids collapse into the architecture of proteins. Like letters of the alphabet, sequential arrangements of the acids turn into useful proteins. But the amino acids can’t organize themselves and proteins can’t self-assemble without DNA. Whereas proteins are like written languages or computer codes, construction at the lowest, simplest level presupposes the existence of genetic instructions like blueprints for a house. There are even microscopic factories inside of organisms that manufacture the needed acids and proteins. Communication of information is required, which begs the question where the language of life comes from. The activities inside cells show such a level of specificity that it is highly suggestive of intelligent design. Darwinian theory fails to address this, because it never anticipated the problem of the source of genetic information, i.e., where the messages in living machinery come from. Natural selection only acts on self-replicating organisms, but without the DNA there is no self-replication. In the beginning was the Word.

Those who think that science is only quantitative haven’t got a clue. Those who think the universe is but a bucket of numbers haven’t begun to figure things out, in terms of reckoning reality and existence. God is a god of liberal arts and science, of reason as well as religion. The brain weighs approximately three pounds and is made of soft grey tissue. Slice and dissect it and you’ll find its structure, but the consciousness it contains is something else besides the network of neurons. The unifying theory takes you back to Mind. It is just as logical a hypothesis to suggest that same Mind which was also in Christ Jesus (and controlled the matter around him), as to suggest any other cosmological theory. God, null physics and/or whatever you choose or come up with, may not even be entirely mutually exclusive when completely understood. Evolution and creative intelligence certainly are not.

_____________________

Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

For several months, I've been solicited for donations by the RNC and Senator
McCain's presidential campaign. Though I've sent contributions to several
Texas Republican candidates, I've hesitated to send any money to Senator
McCain. As I've stated in past articles, I've had my reservations about
Senator McCain for several years. He's gotten under my skin, and I assume
under other conservatives many times with his maverick tendencies to sponsor
bills and side with Democrats on issues that fluster conservatives. For
years he's been the darling of the liberal media for antagonizing
Republicans. But have ya'll notice lately how the liberal media has turned
on him? However, I've maintained all along that I would unenthusiastically
vote for him this November.

Ever since the 1960s when I started to vote, I've had this gut feeling about
politicians who have the ability to energize the electorate to get them
elected to whatever office they seek. And to be honest about it, I've been
right more times than wrong. I could even tell which politicians would not
make it even though I supported them wholeheartedly. Here's an example and
explanation of what I'm talking about. Do ya'll remember when oilman
Clayton Williams ran against State Treasurer Ann Richards in 1990 for the
Texas Governorship? Clayton Williams had the Texas Governorship almost
handed to him. However, his legendary gaffes, especially one about rape,
cost him the governorship of Texas. I vividly remember calling Steve
Hollern, the Republican Chairman here in Tarrant County and telling him,
"Steve, why in the heck won't you call Clayton Williams' campaign
headquarters and see if they can't ship this guy out of Texas until the
election if over. My God, he's got it in the bag, but if he doesn't shut up
he"s going to lose!" Well folks, by a very small margin, Mr. "Big Mouth"

Clayton Wheat Williams, Jr. lost. Interestingly, Governor Ann Richards, a
slick talker, four years later found an inexperienced Republican candidate,
George W. Bush challenging her. Seems that her anti gun legislation here in
Texas didn't sit well with most Texans. I remember saying to my self, ³"this
lady is toast?" when a TV political ad ran depicting: "Don't Let Annie Get
Your Gun." Governor Richards was unexpectedly defeated in 1994 by George W.
Bush, winning 46 percent of the vote to Bush's 53 percent, despite spending
23% more than the Bush campaign.

Incidentally, I felt the same way about President Reagan when he ran in
1980. I knew in my heart that he was going to mop the floor with the most
inept president of our country, President Jimmy Carter. Four years later I
found it almost laughable when Ex-vice President Walter Mondale challenged
'The Gipper.' This time President Reagan won almost every state except Mr.
Mondale¹s own state of Minnesota, which he barely carried.

My political feelings also proved me right on cue in 1992 when I predicted
that President H. W. Bush's renege on his famous "Read my lips, no new
taxes," would hurt him against Governor Bill Clinton. President Clinton won
the presidential election with only 43 percent of the vote. Having said
that, billionaire H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent helped President
Clinton secure his presidential bid when he took in 18.9 percent of the
vote, which probably would have gone to President H. W. Bush. Again, I got
the same feeling when Republicans nominated Senator Bob Dole to face
President Bill Clinton. I knew in my heart that Senator Dole didn't have a
prayer against President Clinton. There are other examples I can give, but
enough said for now.

Stating in my opening remarks that Senator McCain hadn't motivated me at all
in this year¹s presidential election has changed dramatically. This proud
conservative suddenly has become energized by the VP selection of Governor
Sarah Palin of Alaska by Sen. McCain. As I anxiously, like so many other
conservatives awaited his selection for VP, I prayed that he would not get
Senator Liberman, Gov. Mitt Romney, or Tom Ridge. Frankly, I was totally
taken by surprise by his selection of Governor Palin. And when I heard her
speak for the first time to accepted Senator McCain's bid to run with him as
his VP, I shouted with joy. I remember that I went to my desk to find a
letter from Senator McCain asking for a donation. Finding one, I quickly
mailed in a generous contribution.

As expected, the mainstream media soon started to trash Gov. Palin by
revealing whatever negatives they could find about her and her family. This
they did by exposing her husband's 20-year-old DUI ticket, her 17-year-old
daughter¹s pregnancy, and lastly, that a woman with five kids has no
business running for Vice President. However, none of the media¹s critics
has thwarted Gov. Palin's ascent into the hearts of conservative voters like
myself. Liberals, let me tell you that we conservatives know when we have a
politician with super star qualities in our midst, and that politician is
none other than Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska!

Today, I'm more optimistic than I¹ve been on this year's run to the White
House. And I'm beginning to get that gut feeling that Senator McCain with
Gov. Palin by his side has a better chance of being the next occupants of
the White House. And, if my gut instinct proves me right, I think
Republicans will have the first woman President of this Great Nation of
ours.

Finally, if the liberal media despises Gov. Palin, its got to be that they
know she¹s a real threat to them and the Democrats, and for that I love it!

James H. Reza