Author: Mark Draughn

  • Evil Lawmaking: Free Punishment

    About a month ago, Gideon at a public defender posted a poll for his fellow criminal defense lawyers to pick the “most evil legal principle“. Being lawyers, Gideon and his readers are concerned with real legal principles, like harmless error and reasonable suspicion. I’m more concerned with the principles used by legislatures when creating new… Read more

  • New Skyline Photo

    Regular readers may notice that I’ve replaced the Chicago skyline photo at the top of the page. It’s an emerging tradition here at Windypundit that the banner photo is one of the few photos on the site that is not my original photography (mostly because I’m too lazy to trek to the lakefront). The previous… Read more

  • Sallie Mae is a Nightmare

    Woman of the Law has a really good rant about a customer service nightmare with Sallie Mae, her student load provider. I’m hoping the links in this post will improve her search engine score for the phrase “nightmare with Sallie Mae“. Or maybe I should link to it with the more traditional “Sallie Mae sucks,”… Read more

  • Immigration Analogies

    Over at the conservative blog Illinois Review, John Ruskin quotes with approval from an unnamed letter writer who has a few things to say about the recent protests against stronger immigration enforcement (elisions mine) : Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this… Read more

  • Jury Duty: The End?

    Last September, I wrote a long series of articles about my service on a jury hearing a case in which the defendant—whom I called “Jose”—was accused of assault and battery against a police officer. At the end of the 3-day trial, we found him guilty. After I wrote the first four articles about the case—Voir… Read more