Category Archives: General

Over the past forty-plus years, I have received various plaques and certificates. The one shown is the only one I care about, although there is one other I wish I had.

Some attorneys purchase awards; I have seen them on websites from time to time. The Martindale-Hubbell one is earned based on peer review and is only sometimes an easy group to please.

Some people believe we’re all in cahoots with each other, working together against their interests. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many attorneys go out of their way to take down their own. It was always like that. We fought hard against each other, but only in court. Perhaps there are too many lawyers, and competition drives some to it.

When I started in Portage County, there were five attorneys with the highest Martindale-Hubbell rating in the whole county. I clerked for one of them. For more than 130 years, Martindale-Hubbell has evaluated attorneys for solid legal ability and high ethical standards through a Peer Review Rating system.

It started with the first publication to provide such ratings to attorneys because there was no way to know if the lawyer a person was considering doing business with was trustworthy, ethical, or skilled in the legal field.

So, I like it, appreciate it, and am proud of it. But I also know I have to maintain a level of competence because it can be lost at any time.

Gun control should never be an issue. The Second Amendment is clear. Trite as it sounds, guns don’t kill people, but bad people with guns do.

We can’t stop murder. Murder is against the law. More laws against murder won’t stop murder. There will

always be people who break the law. It’s the same as more laws

against guns. We know bad people won’t follow new laws because they don’t follow the old ones.

It’s plain old common sense, but as Voltaire noted long ago, “Common sense is not so common.”

The standard definition of a hero is a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. I would add self-sacrificing. Trump qualifies as a hero under this definition.

Since 2015, he has faced a barrage of attacks. He has always been successful in each attack, with one notable exception, but vindication appears to come on appeal.

The attacks have been by the government entrenched against him and by their media allies. Those very same people have talked about going after those who support him. With all that happened, including ordinary citizens regarding J6 and even school board meetings, his words, “They’re coming after you—and I’m just standing in their way,” ring true.

Everything has backfired, and the Left has gotten desperate. That’s the storyline. So, the answer is assassination. Except for a turn of the head toward a monitor, the bullet goes through his ear, not his head. It almost seems providential, as though by divine intervention.

Trump goes down. More gunshots are heard. Then he rose, and the former president immediately embodied a stance of defiance and solidarity. Trump is seen, an American Flag flying over his head, blood on his ear and cheek, and fist rai raised in the air, urging those who rallied to see him continue in the battle of good vs. evil, as he was rushed off the stage.

For personal reason reasons, I remember this day in NFL history.

At a press conference held by the Metro Goldwyn Mayer film company in Markyate, England, Cleveland Brown fullback Jim Brown announced his retirement from professional football. The decision was final. Brown pursued an acting care.

Brown had one more year left on his contract, but filming for “The Dirty Dozen” bogged down. Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns, wanted Brown back at training camp in Hiram, Ohio. There were rules, and Brown felt he was letting the team down. The added problem was the Browns needing to prepare for the season without him, at least initially. He felt the right thing to do was retire.

I remember this. I still live about four miles from the Hiram summer training camp. In ’65, after the season started, I would have been turning 13. With friends, we would ride our bikes to Hiram, only four miles away.

I had at least 40, maybe 50, autographs from Brown. After practice, you could go on the field and mingle with the players as they left the field. They would all sign. It was before the union and limitations on signing autographs. People like Brown, Lou Groza, Frank Ryan, and Gary Collins were recognizable and sought after. The players were friendly about it.

I don’t believe all of the players stayed in dorms because one player, driving to practice, aided in the rescue of two people drowning in a river in my town that had flooded the roadway. Quarterback Bill Nelson picked me up hitchhiking one time. Hiram remains a small college town, so there is little to do—a few dated college students and locals.

I wish I had those autographs today. The Dirty Dozen was a good movie. It allowed Brown to retire at the top of his game, which doesn’t always happen for athletes. Bill Nelson lectured me about hitchhiking —not the dangers of it, but because he felt I should be jogging the four miles.

Brown died in 2023 at the age of 87. The legacy he leaves is being the best running back in NFL history, his movies, and his being a social activist.

While I’m not always a big fan of social activism, there are exceptions in his case I agree with. Given an opportunity, he didn’t attack Trump. Brown also consistently stated that he would never kneel during the anthem because he believed the flag should be respected, and it’s not why people come to football games. His thoughts on addressing issues were to do it intelligently within a proper framework.

On July 11, 1804, Aaron Burr, a sitting vice president, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, referred to as “an affair of honor,” back in those days.

Is it important? Perhaps so. If nothing else, campaigns of yesteryear were more turbulent than those of today. While the nastiest campaign was between Andrew Jackson and John Quincey Adams, the 1800 election ranks toward the top. A reader of history will find the dirtiest, nastiest campaigns were those in the 1800s. Anyway, for the duel, reasonably common then, you first need to go back to the election in 1796. The first actual election, in a sense, we had in this country.

Burr ran for the vice presidency that year with Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican ticket (the forerunner of the Democratic Party). Hamilton and Burr had a long history of animosity, and Hamilton launched a series of public attacks against Burr, stating, “I feel it is a religious duty to oppose his career.” John Adams won the presidency, and in 1797 Burr left the Senate and returned to the New York Assembly. A word about the Electoral College in the next paragraph because it was a little different then. It’s incorrect to say Burr ran for the vice presidency.

In 1800, Jefferson, at the head of the ticket, chose Burr as a running mate, sort of. Keeping in mind this was before the Internet, Burr helped the Democratic-Republican party by publishing a confidential document that Hamilton had written critical Federalist candidate and President John Adams. Hamilton was a Federalist. The confidential memorandum caused a division among the Federalists and helped Jefferson and Burr win the election with 73 electoral votes each. Bear in mind both men had the same number of electoral votes.

Back then, candidates ran separately, not together. The person with the most votes would be president, and the person coming in second would be vice president. That’s how John Adams served as president and Jefferson as vice president after the election of 1796, a practice no longer in effect. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives to choose a winner. Interestingly enough, there were 35 tie votes in the House.

A group of Federalists, led in good part by Hamilton, supported Jefferson. Hamilton did it as the lesser of two evils. Jefferson won, and Burr became vice president. Burr already didn’t like Hamilton, and this added fuel to the fire. But there’s more.

In 1804, Jefferson distanced himself from Burr. The Federalists, sensing an opportunity, tried to pull Burr into their party. Although he was still vice president, a group of Federalists tried to run Burr for governor of New York. One big problem, though. Hamilton campaigned against Burr, and he lost the Federalist nomination. Well, Burr didn’t give up and ran as an independent for governor. In the campaign, Burr’s character was ruthlessly attacked by Hamilton and actually by others. Still, it was Hamilton that Burr hated, and to preserve or restore his reputation, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel.

Duels rarely ended with anyone shot, and some believe Hamilton fired first and intentionally missed. No one knows that for sure except for a letter he wrote the night before. The letter somewhat implies he was going to do this, figuring Burr would then intentionally miss, and differences could be resolved. Now Burr was a bit of a wild man if you read his history, but the thing is, he didn’t miss. He shot Hamilton in the stomach, and he died the next day. The picture is misleading because it looks like a shot to the head.

Burr got into some other things, which included being charged with treason three years later but was acquitted on a legal technicality and spent the rest of his life publicly disgraced. Hamilton ended up with his face on the sawbuck.

So, the 2016 election, as many believed, was on the tame side compared to it, except in 1804, when the fight was between those running, not between voters. The Electoral College, the law of the land in the Constitution, changed, so in 2016, it was Trump/Pence against Clinton/Kaine. In the aftermath, the fight continued. But the Constitution worked and continues to work.