Doctor Law's Legal Scalpel

R U Your Brain?

2011-03-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/identity-determined-by-more-than-the-brain-1.2514587

U Grad Wins Million At Super Bowl

2011-03-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/film-grad-paves-his-own-path-to-fame-1.2509036

Get An Education, No Worthless Degrees

2011-03-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/no-such-thing-as-worthless-degrees-1.2463789

"God's Will" Is No Excuse To Impose Your Will By Law

2011-03-08T12:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/god-s-will-has-no-place-in-state-law-1.2476780

Our Priceless Rivers

2011-03-08T12:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/clean-water-is-priceless-not-expendable-1.2486021

A New Day Dawns in the US Military

2011-01-26T06:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/diversity-makes-military-a-stronger-force-1.2447830

University of Utah Overlooks Most Important Diversity

2011-01-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/diversity-should-extend-to-age-1.2433878

Gay Rights Are Our Rights

2010-12-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/special-treatment-laws-are-counterproductive-1.2425563

Harry Potter and Porn

2010-10-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and Porn--follow the link below.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/porn-addiction-shouldn-t-be-given-unforgiving-label-1.2375268

The Adverse Side Effects of Nature's Little Baby Making Hard Drive

2010-10-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/sexual-addiction-can-be-overcome-1.2357860

Football: America's Religion

2010-10-15T09:27:00.001-07:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/football-america-s-religion-1.2352989

Caffeine, Red Bull and Other Wild Beverages

2010-10-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/the-perils-of-cramming-and-caffeine-1.2334882

Cramming With the Night Owls and Soaring with the Eagles

2010-10-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/night-owls-suffer-long-term-consequences-1.2330051

Caloric Happiness

2010-05-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

I am a centrist. I belive truth can be found at the center of a twinkie, at the center of a ding dong and sometimes even at the center of a bon-bon and the taste of that truth depends on how many calories I've eaten that day and what my emotional age happens to be.

Successful On My Own

2010-05-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

I achieve most of my goals, sometimes the world just doesn't reach them with me.

Learning Patience at a Young Age

2010-05-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

When you were four, were you the one who could hold off eating your marshmallow with the promise of getting another one in 15 minutes, or did you eat it? (Or were you like me, who discovered that marshmellows were better after they had dried out in the bottom of the bread drawer and discovered when all the cubboards were bare and you were hungry?)

Democracy has requirements

2010-05-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

Living in a free and democratic society does not only require that we express our voice and exert our will but that we exercise restraint, tolerance and understanding.

Constitutional Fantasies

2010-05-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

A claim that their is a universal, absolute, plainly understood application of the Constitution to every unique and developing issue in our modern society is a fantasy that only the arrogant and dictatorial can claim to possess.

Obama and his technicolor tax coat

2010-05-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

"Joseph and His Technicolor Dream Coat" is banned by the Mormons due to its glorification of legalized theft." Biblical Joseph, son of Jacob, head of 1 of 12 tribes of Israel, who under the pretext of a dream and a contrived furture famine, imposed 7 years of taxes in Egypt, will now be labeled the father of Obamaism... because of his totalitarian imposition of this tax and will no longer be discussed in LDS sermons.

Who needs Healthcar? Just live like a squirrel

2010-05-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

"Have you ever seen an ugly squirrel?" Answer: No. "Have you ever seen a sick or diseased Squirrel?" A: No. "Do Squirrels have doctors?" A: No. "Do Squirrel have health care?" A: Gadnabit no! Then the Squirrel rep. from SQIRWIB asked, rhetorically, "Why are Squirrels cute, healthy and disease free," and then ...she quickly answered, "no doctors and no health care whatsoever."

Being grateful for not enough

2010-05-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

The reality of our existence concerns the scarcity of everything, so be grateful when its just about your bald head or too few panties in your drawer.

The governmental necessary responsibility

2010-05-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Institutions and corporations should merit our close scrutiny as much as any government. When corporations attain too much ascendance, sometimes it is only government that truly has the muscle to restore balance. There is no PRETENSE here, but a necessary restoration of equalibrium.

Time without love is useless

2010-05-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

"Time is subjective and the absense of love is a broken measure of its passage until a whole lifetime spills out in a handful of sand." Loren Lambert

Be your brother's keeper

2010-05-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can realize that they are their brother's keeper and that the elevation of the very least of them is the elevation of all." ~Loren Lambert~

Where are your lines drawn?

2010-05-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

"Remember, as life has taught us, there are many fine lines and however fine they may be, they nonetheless are there, and although they may be thined, frayed, maligned and sometimes bent, they must never be crossed." Loren Lambert

Insurance companies: God, but not

2010-05-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

"Insurance companies work in mysterious ways, just like God, except half as generous." Flight of the Phoenix, 1964

Obesity is Inherent?

2010-05-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

A renown nutritionist stated that, "Research shows that if food is put before you, you will eat it, period, no exceptions." Is this true? I guess, what this boils down to is that we are cows and this must be considered with crafting social policy.

Tolken Tales

2010-05-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing?"--Boromir of Iran. Hence, Elrond counsels, "To keep the All Seeing Eye of the Ayatollah from seizing the Ring of power, we must not just deprive him of it, but cast all the Rings forged in the bowels of Los Alamos... ...into the fires of Mt. Doom." Frodo should be arriving soon at Energy Solutions, Utah.

Innocent Ice Skating Innuendo

2010-05-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

Young male teen commenting about Ice Dancing: "Some day I want to have a relationship with a girl like it seems with the ice dancers except without the clouthes." Gasp and laughing by parents and sibling. Realizing what he'd said he turns red and says--"No I mean the funny clothes but not like Moire Virtue."

The satisfying life of a creative man

2010-05-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

There are only a few things more satisfying than writing a bit of work that seems to magically flow through you from the rivers of creation with a force as unstoppable and as moving as any mountain born torrent--brace for the onslaught, for if prepared, it will cleanse and renew you. And when we can't have those other bits of paradise, this is enough. Thank you for such a rich day.

Hope is the defining factor of life

2010-05-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

"Your Quest stands on the edge of a knief. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the company is true." Galadriel of Lothlorien, to the US Winter Olympic Team.

The U.S. Constitution Is a Declaration of Universal Principles, Not a Screed of Transient Guidelines Applicable Only to the Few

2009-11-22T19:12:00.000-08:00

On November 21, 2009, the Desert News published Jonathan Gurwitz’s editorial, titled, “Obama’s duel system of justice is bizarre.” His essay is another example of the ignorant, fear-generated hysteria that arises whenever we seek to bring to justice those who commit unspeakable atrocities. This highlights the failure of legal scholars and our educational system to instill within the American public an understanding and respect for our system of justice. This is no easy task. When we are confronted by humans who murder in cold blood, on a gut level, it is hard to resist our inclination to resort to cursory legal processes, vigilantism and summary executions.

Under such situations, most, like Jonathan Gurwitz, ask: why should criminals, especially those who, “flagrantly violate the laws of war,” and are “mass murderers” have a right to the same justice system that is “constitutionally guaranteed to the citizens” of the United States? Mr. Gurwitz further suggests that to try alleged terrorists in our federal courts will grant them, “far greater rights — and,” will place, “far greater burdens on the prosecution,” then they deserve.

This sounds so emotionally attractive in the abstract, but what is he talking about? What rights should human beings be stripped of and when? Should prosecutors not bare the burden of proving a human being’s guilt? Should human beings, based upon accusations, be deemed guilty and summarily executed?

Mr. Gurwitz goes on to suggest that the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution were not designed to encapsulate universal rights but to create privileges to be earned or obtained through the royal birthright of U.S. citizenship. This, however, is where he and many others falter and then wallow in the mire of our most base human proclivities.

The Geneva Conventions were not promulgated as a model of human civility. They were an attempt by the then participating international community to bring a small measure of watered-down civility, to an uncivil, institutionalized human-atrocity: war. They only created minimum standards of conduct that could be agreed upon by many nations and followed even by countries less advanced and progressive than our own. The United States was a signatory thereof only in hopes that some of the excesses and consequences of war could be ameliorated and thereby not experienced in future conflicts by our citizens and soldiers. They were never meant to be a standard and beacon of appropriate behavior and civility. It was therefore unfortunate that the late Bush administration saw the Geneva Conventions as an impediment that had to be disregarded through legalistic distortions and the redefinition of torture into euphemisms. In fact, it is frightening to imagine what atrocities would have been committed by the Bush administration, in our name, had they and other laws not existed all together.

Contrastingly, the U.S. Constitution was crafted by our founding forefathers, not as a screed of transient guidelines only peculiar to the inhabitants within our borders, but as a declaration of universal and inviolate principles that all nations, peoples and communities should embrace and adhere to--not with begrudging indifference, but with exuberant alacrity. In fact, as a nation, we have often engaged in foreign wars with the very purpose of extolling and implementing these universal principles abroad. Why then do intellectuals such as Mr. Gurwitz and leaders such as the late President Bush seek to impose their own, bizarre duel systems of thought by reasoning that U.S. Citizens should only be entitled to these universal rights while all others as lesser human beings are only entitled to our baser instincts? Applying this bizarre, Mr. Gurwitz argues that these lesser humans should be tried only in military tribunals. He justifies this analysis by claiming that it is no less than what would be done by Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Aside from the inaccuracy and inapplicability of this historical over-generalization, the problem is that most military tribunals are inherently unfair. Why? Because military tribunals lack many of the universal hallmarks of a fair criminal justice system as embodied in our constitution. These hallmarks were acknowledged and made law by Thomas Jefferson because we are fallible and prone to our worst reactive natures. A few of the indispensable components of this system are: (1) the right to be deemed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, (2) the right against self-incrimination, (3) the right for to a trial by an independent adjudicator, (4) the right to representation, (5) the right to confront and call witnesses, and (6) the right to secure and access evidence.

Military Tribunals often do not contain these hallmarks. In fact, Military Tribunals are akin to appointing the victims or of a crime or their close relatives to conduct the investigation, apprehension, trial and sentencing of the alleged perpetrator--a process that although it would be emotionally satisfying for the victims, is, for obvious reasons, fraught with peril and the potential for abuse and injustice.

In conclusion, the civil rights that are distilled and made incarnate within the U.S. Constitution are not blessings to be bestowed upon only those deemed worthy by the “High Priests” of this nation, whether they be Mr. Gurwitz, Presidents, Justices, Professors, Pundits or victims. They are not convenient benefits that must be obtained by purchase, birthright, baptism, or even proper behavior-- they are universal human rights. That is why, as a civilized nation and standard bearer to the world, we should even extend to those who, “flagrantly violate the laws of war,” and are “mass murderers” the same rights that are “constitutionally guaranteed to [our] citizens (i.e., even Timothy McVeigh).”

In so doing, at the end of the day, implementing the principles of the U.S. Constitution in our retribution against even those we accuse of terrorism, does not, as argued by Mr. Gurwitz, “compromise vital intelligence,” “give terrorists battlefield Miranda rights,” “handcuff U.S. prosecutors in evidentiary proceedings,” nor “put the United States and, especially, the policies of the Bush administration on trial.” To the contrary, it reinforces our sacred belief in the phrase that some think Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin wrested from the mouth of God--and that is this: “We hold these Truths to be self evident, that all [Human Beings] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” When this inspired phrase is no longer the guiding creed for our thoughts and actions, we will be no better than the terrorists we are seeking to condemn.

Loren M. Lambert, Midvale Utah
© November 22, 2009

Taxpayer Tea Bag Tax Protesters Cause More Taxes

2009-04-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

I attended the Tea-Bag Tax Protest this April 15, 2009, by accident. I was on my way to conduct a little business with Uncle Sam at the Federal Building. While miffed that I couldn’t find a parking spot nearby, I had to admire the enthusiastic, mostly middle-aged, upper-income crowd exercising their freedom of speech. But it all seemed just a little pointless and a little too slick on the part of those using the protest for political grandstanding.

It’s like having a rally against death. After the Star Spangled Banner is belted to get great applause, who’s going to say you’re wrong when you deliver a diatribe calling upon Congress, the President, Mother Teresa and President Monson to pass a resolution banishing death and/or taxes for all time? And what counterculture is going to stand across the street and heckle you and plead for God to heap upon them more death and taxes? Yeah, it’s a no-brainer.

Consequently, although it looked like a crowd with which I didn’t agree politically, I couldn’t exactly tell them they were wrong. Instead, I just chatted with a few of them. Some were pretty level-headed and just took issue with the extent of taxation. Others, however, of the crackpot-Unabomber-vintage anarchist type, were of the notion that somewhere in some unknown land there has been a tax-free era of human history to which we must return.

For fear of being strung up, I didn’t mention I was about to advocate on behalf of a coal minor who, after twenty-eight years of arduous labor resulting in a worn-out back, mangled limbs and blackening lungs, was petitioning his government for social security benefits. Nor did I argue that ever since humans banded together in social societies there have always been "taxes." This is true whether paid in sweat equity while assisting in a communal hunt, pitching in to rebuild the neighbor’s home that was demolished in an earthquake, or paid in blood protecting our liberty. No, I just congratulated them for their concern and went on in to do my job.

When I was done and exited the building, the rally was over. The Taxpayer protesters had all left. They had all gone home in their cars fueled by gas secured by American taxpayers and paid for by too many soldiers’ blood. They drove over American taxpayer constructed roads, past taxpayer paid law enforcement officers while on their way to pick up their children from the taxpayer funded schools. The only thing left behind was dozens of tax protestors’ signs and their garbage – all to be picked up at the taxpayer’s expense.
Loren Lambert,
April 16, 2009©

How the Bush Administration Killed All The Lawyers

2009-04-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

The recently released "Torture Memos," largely penned by Federal Judge Jay Bybee, should cause us all great shame. Even without regard to the horrors committed under their cloak, the very existence of these memos should be of grave concern to all US attorneys and especially those graduates, as I am, of the J. Reuben Clark Law School where Judge Jay Bybee obtained his degree. Although certainly less horrific, the memos are nonetheless more reminiscent of documents from Hitler’s Germany than from the beneficiaries of the Declaration of Independence, in which it was declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

These "Torture Memos" detract from one admirable reputation that lawyers have fostered that is typified, in a backhanded way, by Shakespeare’s play "King Henry the VI" in which its fictional character Dick the Butcher, a follower of anarchist Jack Cade, whom Shakespeare depicts as "the head of an army of rabble and a demagogue pandering to the ignorant," proclaimed, "the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers." Shakespeare knew what we often forget, that lawyers first and foremost must and should be the front-wave defenders of democracy. They must stand as soldiers defying any person, entity and government who would destroy our democracy or deprive us, or any human being, of our inalienable rights and liberty. In so doing, we should take pride in the reality that we lawyers thereby often become the targets of tyrants who must marginalize us, as was recently attempted in Pakistan, or who must round us up for extermination, as occurred during the communist revolutions in Russia, China and Cambodia.

It is this view of lawyering that inspired the Declaration of Independence and gave us the Bill of Rights. These "unalienable" rights, among others, include: the right to be secure in our persons and property; the right against unreasonable searches and seizures; the right against self incrimination; the right of due process of law before being deprived of life, liberty, or property; the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury; and the right to an attorney. These rights have been identified and given the force of law to ensure that even in the most trying times, and in those moments of our greatest need – during war, famine, upheaval, or in high-profile criminal proceedings – we will not succumb to our worst natures and thereby perpetuate the very horrors and crimes we seek to eliminate.

The rule of law and the Bill of Rights are not walls that confine us, but windows to a better world for all mankind. It is only through adherence to these same rights that we, as a people, can stand proudly as leaders of all humanity. Contrarily, it is the disregard for those same rights, no matter who asserts claim to them, that drags us down to the level of the enemies of democracy and equality – to the same level as those we deem terrorists and murderers.
Henry Lewis Mencken defined a lawyer as, "One who protects us from robbers by taking away the temptation." Another way to put this is that a lawyer is one who protects us from terrorists and torturers by taking away the temptation, or as one who protects us from the tyranny of authority by adhering to, upholding and enforcing our inalienable civil rights.

Also, in describing the legal profession, John W. Davis observed, "True, we build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures – unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men’s burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state." These two quotations express the important roles of lawyers in crafting, employing and executeing the law in a manner that promotes justice, equality and tranquility for all humankind.

As a law student at BYU many years ago, my legal ethics professor agreed with this assessment, and in an attempt to achieve these ends, he admonished myself and other students that we were not hired guns to be mindlessly welded to do one’s bidding without question or pause, nor were we self-righteous moralists who should deprive others we deemed inferior or less worthy of the benefits and protections of the law. No, even when it meant a loss of income or putting potential clients at a disadvantage, we were to be both defenders of the defenseless and downtrodden, and we were to decline our skills, if not our services, to those persons and entities who would employ us to justify the unjustifiable and to engage in the unethical.

But this isn’t what Judge Jay Bybee learned at BYU. Just the opposite. Judge Bybee and the lawyers who justified torture for the Bush administration failed to uphold these traditions. They deserve our disdain and censure. In fear of losing their jobs, or in giddy drunkenness with their own power and intellect, they first became self-righteous moralists who deemed that other human beings had no rights and protections under the law, and they then allowed their souls and senses of propriety to be seduced by the Bush administration, which welded them like lethal weapons against the defenseless.

Hence, instead of "protect[ing] us from robbers, [terrorists and tyrants] by taking away the temptation," and "smoothing out difficulties, relieving stress, correcting mistakes and taking up other men’s burdens and thereby making possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state," they sullied and corrupted those agents who carried out the torture, inflicted horrors upon the defenseless, and made us more vulnerable in future conflicts when our sons and daughters will be swept up and tortured in the name of some foreign sovereign’s security. In the mordant words of Ambrose Bierce, their only skill was, "in circumvention of the law."

So although President Bush and his administration did not first kill all the lawyers so it could run amuck among humanity, it systematically eliminated lawyers and others who voiced any dissent, and replaced them with lawyers who were morally dead, and were therefore willing to dehumanize those they wished to rob of basic rights and to justify the unjustifiable. Therefore, while the Obama administration may not prosecute them, they should be censured, impeached and stripped of their licenses to torture the law in order to circumvent it.
Loren M. Lambert
April 22, 2009 ©

2009-03-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

Mr. Geneva Steal Dog Piles on the American People

The Deseret News March 19, “In Our Opinion Editorial,” titled, “Dog Pile on AIG,” spews the apologia, out-of-touch-with-reality tripe that is indicative of the irrelevance of many a failing newspaper across the country. It’s no coincidence that these newspapers are written by the Joseph A. Cannon’s of the world who try to dazzle us with their shellacked and spray painted bullshit.
So what bit of patronizing pap does Mr. Geneva Steal have for us? He states that the AIG, “debacle is so complicated the average American, including many members of Congress, can’t understand it.” Hence, the 165 million in bonuses the derelict company has dished out to its stalwart leaders should be yawned away because, “as the Washington Post noted this week, the bonus-takers are the only people on earth who truly understand what they have done and who are capable of undoing it.”
Whoa! Good job Mr. Cannon. Way to launch on to this pithy bit of homespun downright incontrovertible wisdom. Reminds me of that show, “It Takes a Thief.” Or, using another bit of folksy, down home wisdom--my farmer uncle always said that the Fox is the only one that can revive all the chickens in the hen house that it has ravaged. I mean, gnashing and ripping hens apart is such a complex and complicated thing that the average American, including many a Deseret news editorialist, can’t understand it.
Therefore, don’t shoo the poor sharp-toothed mangy little bastard away. No, invite him in to play with the kids and give him his own little Fox den right in the hen house and if he chews up a few hundred more chickens, no biggie. Just have the dumb American tax payer--who can’t understand the complexity of death or the loss of a 165 million chickens--supply the cute little Fox with a few hundred more hens every other week.
Gee, thank you so very much Deseret News for helping me understand this complex world we live in. I don’t even have to think any more. I, and everyone else now realizes that the AIG bonus-takers in the AIG chop shop and the Fox in the hen house are right where they should be.

Loren Lambert, March 19, 2006 (C)
Midvale Utah (801) 568-0041

Christmas Elf Chris Butters Wishes All A Merry Jihad!

2008-12-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

Many may not know this, but Utah Senator Chris Buttars recently took a break from his duties as Gayle Ruzika and the Eagle Forums' whipping boy at the Utah state legislature to take a position as Head Elf at the North Pole. Yes, its true. What else could explain this switch from his usual endeavor to malign other people to his new urge to spread good cheer? Now many who were aware of this broke out in a short-lived celebration when, without resigning his position with Santa or removing his green tights, velvet jacket and pointy hat, he returned to Utah, marched to the State Capitol and declared that we are a "Christian nation and ought to use the word [merry Christmas]." Apparently, he wants to cash in on his cachet as an Elf and an elected official to pass a non-binding resolution to encourage Utah business owner to wish everyone a "merry Christmas."

Unfortunately, before Sen. Buttars could do this, a few mavericks in the Utah legislature passed a non-binding resolution of their own. It first reminded our rather good natured Christmas Elf Chris Butters that while Santa at the North Pole may demand that he and his fellow comrades pepper their greetings with "Merry Christmas," we cannot do the same here in the United States. No, it went on to state that while we may be viewed as a "Christian Nation," we are a multicultural and democratic nation and we invite people of all faiths, or of no faith, to worship how, when and where they choose, and to wish others a "merry" whatever or a "happy holiday." Lastly, it stated that, unlike the good old USA where we frown upon using government to force people to think, dress and talk in a way that favors a particular religion, it was proposed that when Sen. Buttars finished with his Christmas duties up North, he may want to look for employment in Iran where he can help that "Muslim Nation" make sure that its citizens, regardless of their faith, by pain of death, only wish people a "Merry Jihad" and not a, "Happy Holiday," or "Merry Christmas," and definitely not a "Happy Hannukka." This is only right, the resolution indicated, since after all Iran is a "Muslim Nation."

Loren M. Lambert
Copyright December 3, 2008

Proposition 8--A Call for Compromise

2008-11-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

The homosexual community desires the institution of "marriage" to regulate their unions. Contrarily, the conservative elements of our society, including the religious right, oppose extending to homosexuals this governmental formality. They argue that "marriage" should be reserved for monogamous, heterosexual couples; and fearing they are losing ground, they have sought legal reforms like the passage of Proposition 8 in California to stem the tide of the gay rights movement. This has set off a firestorm.

Before I wade into it, in the interest of full disclosure, let me acknowledge that I am decidedly a screaming heterosexual--somewhat partial to this word's latter part especially when paired with a joyous bit of conjugal crooning. Moreover, I am embarrassed to say (yes, frankly my natural orientation, my instincts and religious upbringing made it very psychologically distressing) that when not dreaming about heavenly messengers and Nirvana, I have had in my long life a rare homo erotic dream, as well as a few other non traditional ones, all from which I was relieved to wake up; I have also had several homosexual acquaintances, relatives and friends; a few more rabid homophobic cohorts, and I was once gay but that was about 157 lives ago when I just happened to be reincarnated as a Chichlid into a watery community that did not frown upon changing sexuality (and thereby orientation) but in fact encouraged it as a matter of survival (Google it). In short, I feel I am almost as qualified as anyone else to address this topic.

Now, before you suggest that I am making light of this very serious polemic, let me also state that I understand that traditionally marriage was a hallowed religious institution that governed the union of a woman and a man so that they could be bound together by love and mutual respect for the purpose (as suggested by some) of raising up children to pay taxes (and tithes), supply soldiers and heirs, and to render up the occasional wench or two for the Kings' sons and his royal knights. On the other hand, I am likewise fully aware that homophobia was also (and in some places still is) an insidious sentiment that has been encouraged by religious institutions that have tried to ensure the disunion of the human body from its frame. For these very reasons, while I am exceedingly partial to the former, (given that it worked for me when I grew up and my aunt swears I am a descendant of royal French lineage), I am decidedly against the latter--as I am all hatred and bigotry--and I therefore opine that perhaps, as we did with affirmative action, we need to go as far as practicable in the opposite direction. Similarly, let me also not hesitate to add that I am just as decidedly against vandalizing LDS churches or other similar forms of violent expression because of this faith's zealous support for Proposition 8.

As a compromise in the battle to expand the concept of marriage to include homosexual unions, some suggest that they should be granted the right to "civil unions." This concept is not wholly foreign to the law. Currently government allows groups of people, gay, straight or otherwise, to join together for common purposes to form corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, etc (from Exxon to Playboy to RJ Reynolds, from Enron to Dr. Johns, and from McDonald's to Nevada's brothels). Even though they don't bring children into the world (at least not by definition), these business entities engage in all kinds of questionable and reprehensible acts (some that cause sufficient harm to be sanctioned by law and some that do not) and they are yet allowed great privileges and protections under the law which govern their formation, organizational structure, existence, and their dissolution.

The legal formalities establishing these business entities were created to bring order and civility to the many relationships that were being formed in the business world. For much the same reasons, "civil marriage" and "civil divorce" have been promulgated to establish order and consistency in the mechanisms that join men and women together to form a common household. Outside of "civil marriage," heterosexual couples may also marry in religious ceremonies that sometimes have additional moral restrictions and regulatory components not provided by law. For instance, some religions proscribe divorce. Hence, to comply with their sectarian vows, adherents to those religions are free, as their own consciences dictate, to eschew divorce and endure their difficult marriages. As we know, some religions allow homosexual unions and some vehemently do not. As citizens of the United States, we may embrace these different religious groups or shun them. It's a choice that should be celebrated by both sides of this issue. Of course, these religious "marriages" are not endowed with the legal benefits of a "civil marriage." And herein lies the controversy.

Under our Constitution, our law should, to the degree practicable, be blind to race, religion, color, disability, sex and even sexual orientation. Consequently, the differences between religious marital practices should not be propagated in our legal formulations. So what is the best remedy to harmonize the law so that it is both even handed and palatable to these disparate groups? Rather then getting bogged down in endless and irreconcilable discussions on nurture versus nature, the divine or traditional origins of marriage versus more humanistic or evolutionary beliefs, there are some constants at play in this controversy and some basic principles upon which question should be answered.

First, no amount of religious indoctrination nor legislation will change the reality that for reasons beyond some of our complete understanding (I will never claim to completely understand what it is to be a women or a homosexual, etc.), a small percentage of humanity will have homosexual unions. Second, before an activity or lifestyle is deemed to be sufficiently harmful to be proscribed by law, the harm it causes must amount to something more than just a religious based fear or an offense to religious beliefs and values. For instance, it is a specious argument that homosexuality will become so popular it will lead to our extinction as a species. (In fact, I suspect that this insipid argument was really born of the wishful thinking of house mice, gray whales, green peace advocates and Satyrs). Third, since Homosexual unions do not cause harm, they should not be proscribed nor limited by civil law.

Given these realities, the question becomes, if homosexual behavior should not be sanctioned by civil law, should it be allowed the same conventions as heterosexual couples in "marriage"? Again, the conservative and religious right argue that if homosexuals are granted civil marriages, it will decimate the traditional institution of marriage and weaken its strength, endurance and prevalence and lead to the deterioration of the basic, traditional family. Whether or not this argument has any merit, why does the homosexual community insist on appropriating for itself an institution that has been created and perpetuated by its historical oppressors? Why not allow the religious right the benefit of reserving the nomenclature of "marriage" for monogamous heterosexual couples?

On the other hand, as indicated above, instead of the laxity of free-wheeling, unregulated consensual unions, homosexual couples desire the order, institutionalized commitment and normalcy of "marriage," to regulate their unions. Furthermore, many gay rights advocates argue that they don't want something separate from "marriage." They suggest that accepting a compromise like "civil unions" would equate to segregation and would therefore, just like racial segregation, never really be "separate but equal." This argument is not wholly without merit. Under such a scheme, just as racial bias was institutionalized under the Jim Crow laws, homosexuals may simply find the historical prejudice against them being codified in the same manner. Nevertheless, for both sides of this issue, wouldn't some semblance of the institution of marriage be better than the status quo?

The needs of both parties could be satisfied as follows. First, the government shouldn't be in the "marriage" business at all. The institution of "marriage," that originated in religion should be relinquished back to religion. Let religious institutions do with it what ever they will. Instead, just as government has created regulations to establish different types of business entities to create order and normalcy in the business community, government should not license "marriages" but should only grant civil unions. These "civil unions" should be governed by current marital and divorce laws, or the government could create several different types of civil unions. This would thereby allow consenting adults, whether homosexual, heterosexual or asexual unions of convenience--just as people do for their businesses--the same right to choose the order and structure of the particular "civil union" they desire for their relationships. This would put gay unions on equal governmental footing with heterosexual "marriages." It would further allow the religious right to define "marriage" as each religious group sees fit.

This could possibly have a civilizing effect upon the unregulated unions of the gay culture that the religious right so drastically detests and fears. Maybe, heterosexual couples should take pride and find solace in the fact that due to the positive examples they have set displaying the benefits of "marriage," they have caused the homosexual community to desire those same benefits of community-acknowledged love, commitment and belonging. Isn't this a good thing? So why not open those benefits to all consenting adults and stem the round of "Propositions" that will surely befall us in the future with the waste of millions of dollars and tons of love-sapping emotional energy? Couldn't that money and emotional energy be better spent concentrating on devoting ourselves to those we have voluntarily chosen as our partners? Instead of disenfranchising a small minority from an institution it longs for, wouldn't the religious right be better off concentrating on setting such a stellar example of its position that it will become a clarion call for others to voluntarily embrace?

Loren Lambert

A Chicken In Every Pot, A [Volkswagon] In Every Garage

2008-10-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

With his falling poll numbers, Senator McCain pulled out the stops and promised the American people that if he was elected he would ensure a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Or was it?

Wait, hold it. Now I remember correctly. No, it wasn't Senator McCain. He's not that small minded, he is a maverick. He's much more ambitious then that. What Senator McCain said at his second Presidential debate was, "I promise every American that the Federal Government will buy him or her a house to cook a chicken in and a garage to park their car in." Yeah, that was it.

It was President Herbert Hoover who in 1929 promised each American household the chicken and the car and it was Adolf Hitler who in the early 1930s promised all of Germany a KdF-Wagen [Volkswagen] for every family. And it worked. Hoover was elected President and thereby had the honor of escorting the American people into the great depression and Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and promptly lead his country into the hell of the holocaust and into total war.

So, yes, Senator McCain continues to pull out all stops in his bid to gain the Presidency. Will he or will he not escort the American people into its second great economic crisis and into endless war in Iraq? It certainly does seem a possibility when he says it, for who better to promise to buy your vote and make it sound oh so patriotic and palatable? This is so because although a rose may smell as sweet when called any other name, a sick ploy to buy votes having come from a democrat would be smelled out for what it was -- a crock of s_ _ _ gilded with instant-gratification gold.

Open that up for cheap smelling salts when you feint as the billion dollar bailout fails, because that is all it will be good for, I promise.

Loren M. Lambert
Copyright October 18, 2008

The 700 Billion Dollar Balloon

2008-09-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

Some want to call it a 700 billion dollar bailout, some a rescue and others a "stimulus package." But here's what it really is, a 700 billion dollar balloon for our billionaire barons. This huge house of cards we have all unwittingly helped amass into all of its lofty, termite ridden glory, was created on our backs by the elite who benefited most from its teetering heights. To keep it that way so that high property values, exorbitant interest rates, and easy credit could float them all above the dross, they need this gargantuan balloon to tether it up with millions of strings and gallons of helium.

Without the helium lift, land prices will fall and with it the house of cards that our entire economic mirage has been built upon. In the short run, except for those who have been completely responsible and have not bought into this mess, there will be pain, maybe lots of it. But in the long run, if the lower and middle class survive the crush, with lower land values, the American dream will be more within their grasp. Perhaps that is what we need to finally discipline our selves as a nation because that pain is going to come sooner or later, why not take it now?

However, with the billion dollar balloon, the elite will be able to continue earning obscene salaries while enslaving the American public with mortgages it can't afford and credit that it cannot resist.

Therefore, if the status quo is going to be floated so we can enjoy our house of cards a while longer until the helium slowly leaks away, at the very least demand that our politicians secure limits on usury and consumer credit and force the wealthy, before they sail away on their golden parachutes, to disgorge their plunder.

Loren M. Lambert
September 29, 2008

The Hasty Hand of the Law and Brian Wood

2008-09-25T03:47:00.000-07:00

After an argument with his wife, Brian Wood was sitting in his car, an obvious shell of a man, a gun held to his head.

All about him the ever impatient law enforcement officers were huddled behind barriers and shields. Acting brave and trying to provoke Brian into standing down, the officers, all decked out in their SWAT team outfits, volleyed back and forth at him using tear gas, stun grenades and intimidation.

However, they didn't look all that heroic. It was all there to watch on the 10 o'clock news. They looked like a bunch of grade schoolers poking their sticks at a wounded, wild and trapped animal. The outcome was apparent without any additional watching or ever reading the morning news the following day. Someone was going to die and of course someone did.

So, for the last time, please explain to me why oh why oh why can't law enforcement ever simply show a little Gandhian restraint and calmly, patiently and simply wait things out? It never ceases to amaze me the countless lives, including the innocent, law enforcement and the not-so-innocent that are lost--from Ruby Ridge to the Swapp Compound to Wacco--because law enforcement had to force things instead of waiting out the stand off.

Let's face it, Brian Wood had isolated himself in his car. The car was hemmed in. He wasn't going anywhere. He was surrounded. Instead of using their expensive toys, all law enforcement had to do was secure the area, rig up lights for the coming night, post a few officers in four hour shifts and wait it out. Although not nearly as sexy and cool, even if it would have taken a day or two before Mr. Wood succumbed to fatigue, hunger and thirst--that would have been a far better outcome and probably less expensive than the bravado that law enforcement is always so eager to display--often with unnecessarily deadly outcomes.

Loren M. Lambert
September 25, 2008 Copyright

What's The Test for Success In Iraq?

2008-09-15T00:33:00.001-07:00

Senator John McCain and his adorable side kick Sarah declare that the surge has been a success and we are winning the war in Iraq. Really? How is that determined? By the absence of violence? Wasn't there a greater absence of violence when Saddam was alive and in control?

Using that as a litmus test for success, I guess we should install a dictatorship (dang, the best guy for the job was hung) or better yet we can surge the hell out of them and make sure our investment gets paid in oil--maybe Dick Cheney could stay on to see it through.

No, success is when the Iraqi people make a collective choice to do what is right. That will not be known until the American presence is no longer restoring security by brute force. Only then will we know that their hearts and minds have grasped the ideology of tolerance and democracy.

So what has the surge shown of their hearts and minds?

The other day an Iraqi high ranking officer was being recorded by western media as he berated a junior officer. His diatribe was that the junior officer was soft and had to work harder. The senior Officer screamed that if this junior Officer found a "terrorist," in a home--he was to destroy that home and its occupants, if in a community--he was to rip apart the entire neighborhood, and if in a village--he was to obliterate the entire village until not even a fly knew what had once been there.

Is this progress? Is this what we are proud that our surge has done in Iraq? I don't think so. Perhaps it has worked in other areas of Iraqi society. But that is something that neither Senator McCain nor Senator Obama can know as armed outsiders looking in. To say otherwise is like proclaiming your undying love when some woman is demanding you love her at the point of a gun. With the muzzle held to your temple, it's just a little difficult to be genuine about your sentiments for her. Iraq has that muzzle held to its temple and who knows what it is collectively thinking despite whatever platitudes are coming from its mouth. Only time will tell when we are long gone. So in the interest of discovery, let's give them the best shot we can and get the heck out of Dodge.

Loren M. Lambert
September 14, 2008 Copyright

George Bush With Lipstick and a Bigger Vocabulary

2008-09-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin is a scary thing. She does not represent the new Republican party. She's still more of the same, but she's pretty and has a bigger vocabulary than G.W. Nevertheless, if you listened closely to her acceptance speech, she made it clear that she has the same disdain for the law (". . . [Obama's] worried that someone won't read them their rights) and basic human rights, the same disregard for the environment (drill, drill, drill, drill until the sun don't shine--not a quote but a paraphrase--not that we shouldn't but that we should act with prudence), the same adherence to old school diplomacy (“Obama wants to meet them without preconditions) and the same lust for everything that unfettered corporate greed can give her and the American elite (yes, she did support the billion-dollar-boondoggle-bridge to a small island where it would have been less expensive buying a Lear Jet for each inhabitant).

[But on the other hand she is the governor of the biggest state in the union (population 685,000 about a fourth of Utah's population) just like Dick Cheney was the something or another from the State with the most jackrabbits per capitat (about six for every citizen of Alaska--I know I counted them).]

That's why she was selected--she is the stealth Bush in effeminate slick skin. And it is not Obama's alleged silver tongue that the American people need to be wary of, it is the wolf in the fashion model's clothing.

Bush talks like a babbling idiot because of the old adage, garbage in, garbage out. Obama is well spoken because his superior talent as a public speaker is backed up by a brilliant mind and a wise intellect. Palin, on the other hand, is well thought of because, as John Cougar Mellencamp has sung, "when those crazy nights come callin', she can dance on the table like all of the rest." And that's after having five kids, tramping the Alaskan outback, shooting a heavy caliber rifle, overhauling a snow mobile engine and mixing it up with all the high rolling oil barons of Prudhoe Bay. What G.W. loving old Republican can resist that? Not a one--especially with all that viagra Bod Dole has hocked.

Let's just hope that the American people can, because as my mother always warned me, while you can take her to bed with you after the big dance, will she be there for you when the hurricane hits and the gray hairs set in?

Well, just like G.W. wasn't, neither will she. No, you'll see their swiftly retreating behinds taking refuge in an Exxon hunting resort away from the prying eyes of the American public.

Loren M. Lamber (Copywrite September 12, 2008)

We Are All Olympians

2008-08-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

I love the Olympics. I relish the opportunity they give for the whole world to unite and celebrate the excellence of human athletic achievement and prowess. Despite there somewhat militaristic feel, I loved the Beijing Olympics. They chose as their theme "One World, One Dream." To emphasize this theme, Beijing made the symbol of the circle a prominent aspect in its ceremonies.

It was fitting. I related to it because all things come full circle. We start off first helpless, drooling and dependent. We then grow into maturity watching the nations great athletes strut out onto the world stage and we all dream and believe that we too can some day join them. While young we practice, toil and sacrifice with no experiences suggesting to our youthful exuberance that an Olympic berth is beyond our reach. When life then passes us by with no realization of this dream, it fades as we confront our mortality, and then once again we become helpless, drooling and dependent. Luckily though, just before abject senescence takes hold, in some mysterious trick of the aging mind, this dream springs back to life.

Similarly, as a boy and then a young man, when I watched the Olympics, I saw myself as one of them, worthy to compete at an international level both physically and mentally. I trained rigorously in my chosen sport of kayaking. I reached a level of expertise that was commendable, but my Olympic dream was never realized. Much later as time passed I came to acknowledge that I never really had what it took to be an Olympian--which was true, most of us don't--but don't tell me that, not now.

Because as more time has passed, I also have finally come full circle. I have devolved back to that more innocent state when as a youth I saw myself as an Olympian. I have forgotten how hard it was and how superior others were who had been blessed with more perfect physical abilities. Now, with my halcyon rose-colored middle-aged mindset and with the help of Olympic athletes like 41 year old Dara Torres, I can watch the Olympics and not just think I could have been an Olympian--I know I could have. Forget the fact that my athleticism was never all that stellar when I was even at my peek. No. I now surmise if only I had just been given the right opportunities, I too would have been an Olympian. I too could have been there on the world stage toiling against all the odds and triumphing in the end.

And that's the other reason I love the Olympics. I love them because I can even more indulgently imagine, if just for a moment, without the need to act upon that dream, that I too am an Olympian.

Loren M. Lambert
September 25, 2008 Copyright

Mark Spitz, Way Greater Than Michael Phelps

2008-08-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

Some people naively think that Michael Phelps is a greater athlete than Mark Spitz. This is obviously not true. Why? Mark Spitz did it with a mustache, a feat little men like Michael Phelps can only dream about. I remember it so vividly, he was standing there with his seven gold medals and a full head of hair and a mustache in his red, white and blue--for a moment he was as great as the Beatles. And not just some well-trimmed, thin, pencil mustache of the hip-hop generation, but a full grown, bushy banner and anthem probably inspired by the Woodstock summer of peace and love. As wind tunnel after wind tunnel have shown, a mustache creates almost as much drag as a National Geographic wind sock. So, here's to you Mark Spitz, the only Olympic swimmer that will ever win seven gold medals in the same Olympics while sporting a psychedelic Sergeant-Pepper's-Lonely-Hearts-Club-Band mustache.

Loren M. Lambert
Copyright August 20, 2008

Where In the World is Captain Porter

2008-08-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Below is a response I emailed to one of my conservative acquaintances challenging what I suspect is a bogus email authored by a "Captain Porter" that maligns Senator Obama. I submit the same challenge to all you Obama detractors (except for the money part). Bring me this Captain Porter. I have left her email address off to protect the guilty since I don't want her to get bombarded with to much favorable Obama information. It might dampen her enthusiasm for the chain-email rumor-mill.

Dear Barbara,

I know you are very conservative, very religious and a staunch republican and I actually find a lot of your emails to be insightful. I am a pragmatist and have ideas and beliefs that would be considered both conservative and liberal. I do not vilify those of different mind and respect differences of opinion. Even knowing that I may offend you and lose your business, sometimes one must take a stand.

I would highly doubt that this email letter from Cpt. Porter is authentic. Have you been able to authenticate it?

Moreover, just so you know, I whole heartedly support Senator Obama. I think he is brilliant and has superior judgment. Moreover, if it weren't for people like him, you wouldn't have many of the benefits that you yourself have had to rely upon at difficult times in your life.
Be careful what you get that purports to be real and not a "fake." Don't be naive. Anything like this can be drafted up and sent around by many a crackpot. I challenge you to track down this Cpt. Porter. Let's make a deal, you track him down and prove he is a real person who was really there when this allegedly happened and I'll donate $50 to John McCain (who I highly admire and who would be a great improvement over Pres. Bush who has been a disaster) and if you can't, you donate $30 to the Obama campaign. Deal?

I think that spreading such stuff, even if done innocently, is being a bearer of false witness and is a violation of one of the most revered Christian ethics not to bear false witness.
I also find it in such poor taste that it comes with an ad to buy beauty products. You should know better.

Good luck on under taking my challenge.

Just so you are aware, I have read and listened to many reports delivered by reporters and others who were not a part of the Obama entourage who have far greater credibility than your, most likely fictional, "Cpt. Porter," about similar crackpot emails and messages being sent around .

Even if we don't agree, I admire your zeal.

Sincerely Loren M. Lambert

From: barbara jolley
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 10:18 AMTo: . . .
Subject: FW: From Afghanistan
Subject: From Afghanistan
Thought this was compelling enough to pass around.

Hello everyone, As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass alongthat Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visitto "The War Zone". I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off theplane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with theMajor General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn'tsay a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As hefinished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tentthat military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) sohe could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunnedthe opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back homethat he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going tomake an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that areproviding the freedom that they are providing for you.I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the DallasCowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be thePresident of the United States . I just don't understand how anyone wouldwant him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared tobe around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country. If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to knowwhat kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is allfake. In service, CPT Jeffrey S. Porter Battle Captain TF Wasatch American Soldier

MonaVie, As Good Looking As You Think It Is

2008-08-14T00:32:00.000-07:00

MonaVie? Great tasting, rejuvenating juice in an expensive snake skin bottle--almost as good as the juice I just squeezed from the exotic and anti-aging producing service berry picked in the scrub oak jungles of Heber City, Utah. I'm selling it to the Brazilians in titanium capsules so I can charge three times more than MonaVie. I just need an aging Olympian to hock it. Henry Marsh, MonaVie CEO? Great inspiring runner now saddled in a snake skin suit sipping MonaVie bug juice on top of the supper pyramid making us all wish we were up there feeling as awesome and youthful as all them face-lifted, tanned, lipo suctioned high rollers. Ah, the glories of fad trademarking. So, here's a service berry toast to you, my hero Henry Marsh--and it didn't cost me a dime but then again I don't have an expensive looking bottle to put in my window to remind me of the good times when I sipped myself into bankruptcy drinking MonaVie without even an once of alcohol in it to make it worth the price and worthy of a reason for insanity.

Loren M. Lambert
Copyright August 14, 3008

Russia Delayed Reflex

2008-08-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

Surprise. Russia invades Georgia, like the reflex of an old man--something its been itching to do for a long time but cunningly waited until the world's leaders were safely being entertained by their adorable and amazing athletes in the Olympics. During commercial breaks our leaders take time to weigh in with their displeasure.

Their ears to the tube, Sean Hannity and other right wingers try to rank the condemnations thereon. They claim President Bush has won the gold in world record rhetoric, Senator McCain a close silver with a nicely clinched jaw and poor Senator Obama claimed the bronze, bringing up rear with dreams of peace talks.

So how do the Georgians rank them? Words of condemnation, clinched jaws and hopes of peace talks are not going to put out the fires on their burning houses, are not going to stay the boots pressed against their charred heads and will not bring their children back from the dead nor save those who will die in the days to come. So they rank them with their tears, their pain and their coffins. Knowing, as the Russians know that--

It's simply a fight we have no stomach for at this time. Without Bush, McCain or Obama empowered or willing to do anything but mutter for the cameras, we can only hope that God will soften the Russians' hearts and thereby grant us guilt-free Olympic golds.

Loren M. Lambert
Copyright August 12, 2008

I Am a Culturalist--Revisited

2008-08-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

I wholly anticipated that my proclamation that I am a culturalist would cause some to unfairly label me as a bigot who would advocate exclusion based on race, national origin, color and religion. I would not. Nevertheless, I still will not shy away from this nettlesome subject which many think about and that many more confuse with issues of race, national origin and religion. To the contrary, the argument that some cultural influences are corrosive, has nothing to do with race or religion.

Unfortunately, this issue is avoided due to the ignorance-is-bliss pall that undue political correctness throws over necessary introspection and deliberation into culture and its consequences. In this void, many groups, no matter what belief system, ideology or theology they devise, are allowed to label anyone an intolerant bigot should they dare subject their culture and its ideology to any serious criticism--especially if due to coincidence their culture allegedly originates under the umbrella of some well recognized world religion, a particular geographic location or are made up predominately of one race.

Let me reiterate that I do not believe that dangerous cultural ideas and influences are endemic to a particular race, religion or geographical location. However, just as the rotation, axis, atmospheric composition and geographic configuration of the earth tend to produce predictable weather patterns in particular areas, likewise cultures produce societal "weather" patterns, including peace and prosperity or war and poverty. "Culture," in this context, does not mean the manners and artistic expressions of a country, race or religion, it means "the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another," "a particular form or stage of civilization . . . " and "the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic or age group. . . " (Webster's American Dictionary 2000).

Nor do I speak of an "Hispanic," "Islamic," or "American" culture as suggested by an anonymous commentator to this blog. Delineating specific cultures is similar to geographically demarcating watersheds. Just as some watersheds nest one within another, some are isolated pockets and basins big and small, and some encompass massive areas in which one branch of a particular watershed is polluted and turbid bearing no resemblance to another branch of that same watershed that is clean and clear, so it is with cultures. There is a World, a Christian, and a US culture, etc. Nested within them like matryoshkas, are myriad cultures. Some with close affinity and some standing isolated and separate like salty dead sea basins. The "drug cartel culture" does not necessarily have anything to do with "Hispanic culture," and it has no connections to race. However, its appearance where ever it resides is not an accident--societies and their culture or cultures cannot divorce themselves from the reality that they may have responsibility for the emergence, survival and propagation of corrupt sub cultures.

Unfortunately, people from particular cultures, like acolytes of organized religions, may swear that theirs is a model of perfection. However, given the current status of humanity, I would venture to state that no culture is without its warts. And, since I can do so without being called a bigot (since I am part of it), I will assert that US culture, with all its qualities, is prone to escapism, excessive materialism, addiction and arrogant bellicosity. Because of these tendencies, it too bears responsibility for the drug cartels that are funded by American addicts. And herein lies the challenge and the difficulty, some cultures, due to the collective sum of their parts, tend to create certain types of predictable societal weather. The trick is to intelligently analyze these tendencies and proclivities and to root out the abhorrent cultural influences while retaining that which is a beneficial and good. Having made that declaration, let me invite others to either tout their perfect culture or critique its imperfections.

This is important because it is only when those virtues and vices are identified that a more rational discussion can be engaged in on how to encourage the development of positive cultural influences and how to resist those influences that are corrosive. While I do not advocate the suppression and censorship of the free discussion of ideas and ideologies within the United States and elsewhere, I submit that it is appropriate for our country to first completely secure our borders to prevent entry to the undocumented (yes I know there are many of you here and most of you are good people) and second to bar those adherents of ideologies that are inimical to our democratic system.

For instance, an acquaintance of mine and an American citizen that I admire believes that the best form of government would be a theocracy such as it exists in some areas of the world. He should never be thwarted from advocating and discussing this position. Hopefully though, through the power of vigorous debate, he and those of similar bent will be persuaded that theocracies lead to tyranny. On the other hand, not only should we ensure that those requesting asylum to reside here understand what our constitution says but we should strive to ensure they understand what it means.

We believe, as Americans, that all men should be allowed to follow the religion of his or her choice. While we may debate were the boundaries of church and state should lie, there is no room for the adherents of cultures that would supplant our civil government with a theocracy. Hence, if you are a foreigner who desires to install your Pope, your Iman, your Bishop or your Prophet as both the supreme religious leader and ruler of this country in order to create a theocracy, you should not be allowed citizenship. Such an ideology is as dangerous, if not more, to our liberty as would be an invading army assaulting our shores to impose a dictatorship and should be repelled at any and all costs. If on the other hand, you are arriving here with the intent to follow your conscious and live in tolerant peace and harmony with others who follow a different faith, then you have a right to call yourself an American.

So, I reiterate, I am a culturalist. I believe that we Americans should carefully consider which cultural influences are compatible with our way of life and which are not. I am not advocating a religious, race, color or national origin litmus test. I am suggesting that citizenship be awarded to those possessing an understanding and affinity to our way of life. Upon reaching a consensus thereon, we should bar citizenship to those advocating cultural ideologies that are adverse to the principles of freedom, democracy, liberty and the rule of law.

Loren M. Lambert (c)
August 11, 2008

Most Utahans Are at Least Democrats if not Liberals (Shortened Version)

2008-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Many Utahans are liberal democrats in conservative republican clothing and don't even realize it. Granted, if you ask avowed conservative Utahans if, to suppress prices, landowners should be forced to sell their real estate, diamond conglomerates should be forced to place their inventory of gems on the market for sell, or if the sales' price of new and used cars should be regulated, most would understandably give a resounding "no." This is because owning and holding property and acting in one's self interest regarding that property is a bedrock principle of American capitalist conservatism.

If, however, you asked this same group of Utahans the following, their conservative credentials would whither. If a virus was killing 9 out of 10 humans, not just in some distant country among "foreigners," but across America, would it be hunky-dory for a US Pharmaceutical that invented a vaccine to price you out of the market and subject 90% of your family to death by demanding as high a price as people were willing to pay or to sell it to its corporate employees at a cut rate price but to all others at an exponentially high "COBRA" rate?

Next suppose that due to energy demands 50% of the world's grain was slotted to be used for bio-fuels but at least 75% of that same grain crop was needed to prevent starvation and economic ruin across America, would it be okay to let the free market render that 50% into inedible fuel? Lastly, suppose that all the oil barons decided to either: control the oil supply to exponentially increase its price; set a price higher for Americans than, let's say, the Chinese; or bar sales to the American consumer altogether, would this be fine with you? If your answer is no or a wavering yes to any of these last three questions, then you my friend are a fair weather republican, or let’s face it, either a closet democrat or worse, a liberal.

In conclusion, if you think that inexpensive gas is a right your government should guarantee, why is it such a stretch to ask that same government to insure that as a free and great people we assure that adequate health care is within the reach of every American? Don't feel the need? If you don't, it's not because you are a conservative, it's only because you are currently on top and able to afford that $100,000 vaccine and are among the lucky few that the medical industrial complex has not priced out of the market. In truth, making health care within the reach of every American is a more realistic goal then perpetuating the myth that we will always have as much inexpensive nonrenewable fossil fuels as we desire. Moreover, just like there is supposedly a higher percentage of God fearing people in a fox hole, in the ever burgeoning ER rooms across America, metaphorically speaking, there is an ever increasing number of liberal democrats. We are all headed toward that emergency room. So, Utahans, welcome to the democratic party. You'll like the way it feels, I guarantee it.

Loren M. Lambert, Copyright July 31, 2008Midvale Utah 801-568-0041

Why Most Utahns Are at Least Democrats or at Worst Liberals

2008-07-24T21:17:00.001-07:00

This year our usual, patriotic, celebrate-our-pioneer-heritage and eat-a-lot-of-homemade-ice-cream 24th-of-July celebration was ruined when I pulled the wool off of Utah's wolf pack in sheep's clothing--mainly my entire family and 80% of all Utahans. And there, under that downy, vanilla-candle-scented and bleached fleece was not a pack of republicans but a whole flock of liberal-leaning federal government subsidized sheep.

Think it isn't so? Bravely proceed on my stalwart Utah Republicans and first answer the following no-brainer questions:

Setting aside issues of eminent domain--suppose a person owns a large track of land--is that person obligated to sell it if she does not want to? Of course not. Suppose that because this land owner refuses to sell she thereby makes the price of land every where to go up. Or even worse, land speculators also buy up a bunch more land and further cause the price of land to rise. Should these land owners be forced to sell their privately own real estate or sell it at a reduced price? No!!! Private ownership is a bedrock principle of our capitalist system.

So far so good, you are still a conservative capitalist. Let's continue. Suppose your company owns and controls most of the worlds diamonds. Does your company have a right to control how many of those diamonds are sold on the open market to make sure that your beloved bride's rock is still as valuable, if not more, as it was the day you bought it to wed her? Yes! Of course. Capitalism means the right to sell your property when, where and at the price that you can demand. Right?

As a further example, suppose you are a car salesperson. Your at work and see some sap walk onto your car lot. The minute you lay eyes on him, you know from years of finely tuned experience and sharply honed skill that, without you even telling a single big looper, he will buy one of your automobiles for several thousand dollars more than anyone else. Now even though you wouldn't have sold it to your mother at that price, is it legal, fair, all American, according to Hoyle to do it? Yes, buy low and sell as high as possible. This my dear friend is another bedrock principle of capitalism--maximize profits and minimize losses.

Feeling good about your conservative credentials. Let's move on to the harder questions.

Now suppose a mega virus, that is killing 9 out of 10 humans, is raging, not just in some foreign country among people who don't look or talk like us, but across the world, including America. Then, glory to the mother of ingenuity, a US Pharmaceutical company comes up with an exclusive vaccine and decides to demand as high a price as people are willing to pay or decides to sell it to all member of its corporation at a cut rate price but to all others at an exponentially high "COBRA" rate. Now lets say that you've been priced out of the market and 90% of your family will die? Are you okay with that because it is the conservative, capitalist way of the free market? Feeling a little uncertain?

Next suppose that 50% of the world's grain is slotted to be used to create bio-fuels to meet the world's energy demands but at least 75% of that same grain crop is needed to prevent mass starvations across America. Or suppose that some guy name Joe in his Technicolor dream coat determines there will be 7 years of plenty which will be followed by seven years of famine. In these last two scenarios, would it be consistent with bed rock conservative, capatalistic market principles for the government to intervene and assure that grain stocks be stored to stave off starvation? You think maybe? Getting soft? Cozying up to that swearword "liberal"?

Now suppose that all the big boys of oil get together and decide to either: control the supply to increase price; set a price higher for Americans than, let's say, the Chinese; or worse to not sell a drop of oil for several months to the American consumer. Would this be okay? Would you call upon the government to do something about it? If your answer is yes then you my friend are at the far left of the political spectrum and are at the very least a democrat or worse, a liberal.

So, if you think that cheap gas should be a right guaranteed by our government, why is it such a stretch to ask that same government to insure that as a free and great people we guarantee that adequate health care is within the reach of every American? Don't feel the need or the pain? If you don't, it's not because you are a conservative, it's only because you are among the lucky few that the medical industrial complex has not priced out of the market. The reality is that making health care within the reach of every American is a more realistic goal then perpetuating the myth that we will always have as much inexpensive nonrenewable fossil fuels as we desire. Moreover, just like you may find a higher percentage of believers in God in a fire fight in a fox hole then in more calmer times, in desperate cultural circumstances, you may find more democrats then usual during more circumstances. And these are desperate times. So, Utahans, welcome to the democratic party. You'll like the way you look, I guarantee it.

Loren M. Lambert, Copyright July 31, 2008

A Boy Verging on Manhood

2008-07-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

A year ago my first born strutted onto his high school stage to accept his diploma. He made that entry the same way he entered as a newborn--with great exuberance and just a bit of forced bravado to mask the uncertainty he felt venturing out into a new frontier. He then spent a year doing what I never could--living in the dorms on a full ride scholarship--the precursor epitome to the all-American dream; consisting of college classes, hanging with the dorm bros, and earning a little date change in a campus job. Now he is headed out into the world on an LDS mission.

Some have congratulated me for his success. I am perplexed by their comments. "Congratulations," they say while I eat cookies at his farewell. What?--I blink perplexedly. Then they say, "Your son has developed into a fine young man. You should be very proud." I thank them knowing that, except for volunteering half of his chromosomes (yeah, I’m such a hero), I had little to do with his success. Me, I just added water, stirred for a while and whallah!--I whipped off the white cotton swaddling clothes and there stood a whole-wheat, fully yeast risen and fortified golden baked loaf of a boy verging on manhood towering taller than his parents in more ways than his six foot stature.

So where did the time go? Yeah, we men verging on old-fogie-hood say it all the time and have heard it a billion times before it ever slips from our own lips. But it’s so amazing, befuddling and personal we you experience it yourself. Just yesterday my firstborn was a two year old toe-headed toddler who followed me around and gleefully mimicked my every move, including trying to do push ups and bloodying his nose. He ran the block with me at Ft. Lewis, kicked his soccer ball and often bobbed off to sleep in his seat on my mountain bike. Now he calls me old man and takes pains to make sure his hair isn’t combed in the same direction as mine. I look him in they eye and remind him he’s just a punk. And he is, as I am not in my prime, and we both stand at the cross roads, him looking into the future and me holding on to the past.

We took him to the MTC. It’s the antithesis of a military boot camp and instead of the foul-mouthed barking drill sergeants who greet your arrival, there are smiling, silver-haired elderly volunteers whose saintly demeanors and stern directives make you eager not to mess up--not out of fear but respect--and the concern of dashing their boundless faith in you. Soon he was signed in and we were ushered into a chapel. Once in, we were all sobered by a presentation that introduced the uninitiated to mission life. When it was over, the mission president urged us to make our farewell quick and to the point--like ripping off a bandaid--and thereby making it less painful, which suited me.

I am not a person who allows myself to get too close to others. It’s a flaw and defense mechanism I developed early when I thought it was the best way to bear life’s disappointments. It makes the partings less painful and tempers the joy of reunions. It smoothes out the extraordinary and bootstraps the commonplace so that everything is a nice palatable vat of gray. Yet still, with this event that seemed to mark the loss of a more innocent time, as I set adrift the boy verging on manhood, there was a touch of some undefined sorrow deep down in the core of my soul that recognized that a door was closing that would never be open again. I could only be thankful that I had had for a short time the pleasure of his company. As we parted, we hugged and said goodbye. Then he and his college friend left out an opposite exit door with the sign "Missionaries Only" to two years of celibacy and service. But this time there was no hint of diffidence, just the squared shoulders and determined jaw of a confident young man set to do what he knew to be true and good.

Instead, it was us who addled out of the chapel, with a bit of forced bravado to mask the uncertainty we felt in following from afar our son in his new venture beyond hearth and home with the hope that the citizens of Detroit would know what a good person and fine young man they were getting.

So, be safe, do well, as I know you will, and we hope to welcome the man we know you will become back to our home for a brief stay until embarking upon you next venture. Loren M.

Loren M. Lambert July 11, 2008 ©

Wild and Naked, A Sacred Ritual

2008-07-17T02:21:00.000-07:00

So that I can introduce this subject in a manner that everyone won’t get all goofy on me and go in the wrong direction, I'm not the only one that has come up with this. This concept was introduced at a Positive Mental Attitude convention by none other than Zig Zigler some years ago in Madison Wisconsin. In attendance among the business crowd on that fateful spring day were many thousands, including gaggles of born again Christians and a whole swath of Mormon Missionaries. I was there smack dab in the middle of them. Zig recommended that at least once a year, with great reverence and complete soberness of mind, when no one else was around, we should execute this sacred ritual.

First, take a paper sack. Cut two holes in it for your eyes. Then go into a room with a full length mirror and close and lock the door. Put the bag over your head, shed your cloths and peer into the mirror. Try to examine your body as if you were a stranger seeing it for the first time. This simple exercise, he said, allowed one to view with detachment one’s physical body without the distortion of his or her inflated or despondent ego so that the mind could see it for what is was--most likely a vessel needing some serious renovation and work (often unrecognized by the male ego) or as looking pretty darn good (often not appreciated by many women).

Here’s my variation of this theme. Every soul, at least once a year, should do this. Do it early in the spring or in the fall when the mosquitoes aren’t too thick. In accordance with your ability, go on a long, difficult back packing trip, hike, bike ride, run or paddle along some wild river, stream or lake. Get sweaty, tired, dirty and hungry. Eat a simple meal and savor it. Engross yourself in your surroundings. Listen to the life pulsing about you.

Then, as the sun is setting, find a nice secluded and quiet spot next to a clear pool of water. Make sure you’re safe and alone or with an appropriate partner. Divorce from your mind the flies and mosquitoes. Locate either a grassy bank or comfortable slab of rock, strip down naked and take a bracing, cold plunge into the water for as long as you can stand it, maybe going in a couple of times. Completely immerse yourself in the water. Welcome the chill. Upon reaching your limit, haul out and sit quietly. Relish the sensation of your body, fill its vitality and strength. Accept its vulnerability and take measure of its needs. Open your heart and soul to the life force and beauty that surrounds you. Breath it in as you do the fresh air.

Then as the warmth returns to your limbs and skin, as this process revives within you the simple pleasure of life, resolve to accomplish whatever message the experience bestows upon you, as I know it will. Stand wild and naked before the universe just as you came into it. Let it reveal to you the things you must know, the things that you have always known but have had stolen from you by too much of everything. Then, and only then, slowly dress, tread lightly and with gentle ease and grace return to civilization.

Loren M. Lambert
July 16, 2008 (C)

Utah, The Colon of the World!

2008-07-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

Many naturalists have referred to the Amazon basin as the lungs of the world. If so, what is Utah? Some envision it as the world’s large intestine with the anal canal and rectum in the west desert with its discharge, hopefully, somewhere into Nevada. This exact subliminal message is being sent by the corporations who are secretly funding the giant replica colon at the children’s museum. It’s a very important function. Every organism needs one. So why fight it? Why not embrace this ignoble organ?

Moreover, the world is screaming for it. Hawaii wants to ship its waste to the mainland. The eastern seaboard wants to send it west by train. Europe wants to truck it here via Mexico. So why not fill this need? Don’t bring us your hungry, oppressed and poor. No. Bring us your refuge, sewage and waste. Make the desert bloom with chromatic toxins. Fill the great basin with spent glowing nuclear fuel rods. Turn the Great Salt Lake into a sparkling cesspool of mercury, selenium and flushed pharmaceuticals. Then, to top it all off, crowd all the canyons with multimillion dollar homes for Waste Inc.’s CEOs to give them a perch from which to admire their handiwork, just below the inversion layer. With a little ingenuity, the crossroads of the west could be the cross colons of the world.

Some in Utah don’t understand this potential. They want to muck things up with stuff like "FCOZ," not a Utahanism swearword nor what rude U. of U. football fans say about BYU’s cosmo, but the "Foothill and Canyon Overlay Zone." With it and other misguided, wacky, Save-Our-Canyons, SUWA, Sierra Club, tree-hugging, smell-your-arm-pits granola plans, they want to ensure that Bambi, Tweety and Thumper have forage to eat, a place to lay there terrain hogging heads, and clean water to drink. Don’t they know they can just buy it at Costco?--Geeeezzzz. Makes me want to scream. As my Dad always said, "you can buy a whole lot of fresh, clean, bottled water with the money you get from storing a few spent nuclear fuel rods under you bed. So why fuss trying to keep it potable in the first place!"

Then they want "green belts"--a code word for vermin infested natural habitat corridors along our streams, rivers and lakes. This is a plot to bring West-Nile-Virus-infected mosquitoes, rabid Raccoons and disease ridden ticks right to your child’s bedroom door. Outrageous. No, no, no. That’s what our Supreme Court protected gun rights are for--to kill Bambi before this tick-laden beast ever gets near your child. It’s like Brigham Young never got Rocky Mountain spotted fever and blurted out, "Stop. This is the place. I’m too damn sick to make it to the Hotel California."

And it’s good he was because ancient lake Bonneville carved out one heck of a sweet giant toilet bowl that can hold thousands upon thousand of wealth producing "brown gold" that thereby it wouldn’t be goin’ nowhere and wouldn’t be hurtin’ no one. I mean, what do they want? To make the Wasatch Mountains the "Lungs of the West?" Just silly. That’s what the third world is for. Let Brazil and the Congo protect the forest to flush out our "giant bong" with fresh air and we’ll protect the God given right of those whose ancestors got here first to develop their land in the way they think is best for them. That’s the all American way. Hoorah.

Loren M. Lambert July 15, 2008 ©

PS--To Avoid the New Yorker melt down, please be aware that this is satire.

Why Free Trade Isn't Free & The Hire American Campaign

2008-07-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Senator John McCain supports free trade. Sounds great. I would want it if it where free, but it's not.

In America--wage and environmental laws, that as a "free" nation we have decided are necessary to protect our well being--add to the costs of production. As a consequence, the same sneaker that we manufacture in America that is labor and environmentally friendly costs more than the same sneaker made in China. Why?

Though it may come as a surprise to some, constructing a chimney with an air scrubber or cleaning waste water before it is discharged back into a river costs money. Requiring over time pay and other work benefits further add expense to manufacturing.

Hence, China sells the misery of its people and land to us in the form of a cheaper sneaker. It thereby enriches its oligarchy, not its people. This not only impoverishes the Chinese worker because of the squalid conditions they must work in for low wages, but bankrupts the US worker because of job loss and the pollution that knows no border and needs no passport to go where it is naturally taken.

As a result, the American manufacturing-blue-collar worker, who once had a well paying job must not only lament the loss of his job to his under-paid, Chinese brother, but must breath in China's polluted air sent via the jet stream directly to his back porch where he must idely sit contemplating what to do to reverse this trend.

In his contemplation, instead of learning Chinese, he might resolve, once he gets his welfare check, to buy only American products. That has been all the rage for years--with one small problem. It needs the, "Hire Only American Campaign." You see, while all us American workers are "buying American," the American entrepreneur, to avoid the expense of our environmental laws and high labour costs, is taking his capital over seas.

So, the "Buy Only American Campaign" must be matched by its equivalent the "Hire only American Campaign." Haven't heard of it yet? No you haven't, and you won't. The American worker has been betrayed by the American capitalist. That is why free trade is not free and that is why trade agreements must require that foreign manufacturers comply with our labor and environmental laws before they should be allowed to compete in our great country against those who are willing to keep their capital at home and hire Americans.

And who wants to do this? Senator Obama. You want the best for everyone not just the foreign oligarch and American capitalist?

Vote for Obama.

Loren M. Lambert
July 4, 2008 (c)

Email Response to my Senator Obama essay

2008-06-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

I appreciate comments on my articles even, negative ones. Below is a negative email on my Obama piece and my response.

From: Ted Loosli Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 2:06 PMTo: Loren LambertSubject: Sen. Obama
June 26, 2008

Dear Mr.Lambert,
It strikes me as strange that a man who makes his living convincing people to his way of thinking would began his tirade by insulting his listener because of decisions reached. .Perhaps your purpose was not to persuade but only to intimidate while venting rather than winning people over to the candidate with which you are obviously impressed.
Let me respond by telling you some of the things that I am impressed by. Senator Obama is in the biggest fight of his political career and needs votes. That is achieved through telling voters what they want to hear, "Change". People are unhappy with government, period. They don’t like being governed and being charged for the privilege. They don’t trust politicians! Of course they want change but those that believe the new kid on the block can come in and affect meaningful change are those that are naive in my opinion. Within the span of my memory every one elected has done it with a promise of change.

Politicians with integrity come into office with high hopes and perhaps unrealistic expectations of their influence in Washington. The "good old boys" in both parties soon shoot them down and show they must play the game the way it's now played or they get ignored. I’m sure Senator Obama has learned this lesson, judging by his voting record, and simply wants to hold the office of the president for the greater potential influence he can have to further his agenda, whatever that might prove to be. However, the president needs the support of the congress before he can do anything meaningful he proposes so we are back to the back scratching in the "good old boys" network..

The fact that Senator Obama feels so strongly antiAmerican about something that prevents him from wearing a symbol of his love for our country on his lapel which thousands have died to preserve, his refusal to pledge allegiance to the flag while in front of a crowd hoping for a better America shows me his heart lies elsewhere than the betterment of the country he proposes to "change, yes we can". His public support for using public campaign money until he actually must make that choice then "changes his mind" to better his chance for election is also worrisome. I doubt this mind change would have occurred if John McCain had proven himself capable of matching the funds of Obama's contributors generosity.

Though John McCain is a lessor risk and in the political arena of choices we have these days, I think I’ll write in Mitt Romney on my ballot.
Regards,
Edward Loosli

Dear Ed:

In the same way I found it pathetic that people would not vote for Mitt Romney because he was LDS, I find the suggestion that just because someone is a Muslim (or attended a Muslim service when the person was a child--as if he made the choice to be there), has a Muslim name, etc. to be unpatriotic--offensive, defamatory and idiotic. It is demagoguery at its worst. If any one turns their ears off because of Obama's middle name, etc. they deserve no respect. Ann Coulter is a hideously shameful sham dressed up in a fashion models body and people that tolerate her kind of divisive, rude pap merely want to console their small mindedness.

Your suggestion that "Senator Obama feels so strongly anti-American," because he doesn't "[wear the] symbol of his love for our country on his lapel" is a very superficial way and I might add fatuous way of judging the heart of a man. I find this especially interesting from a person who claims to champion the rights of the underdog and downtrodden. If it were not for the work of the people you appear to revile, like Senator Obama, you and other deserving Americans would not have the luxury of sitting home, composing and then disseminating your defamatory sermons. I suppose you would not vote for a Jehovah's Witness because they do not participate in the pledge of allegiance and you would have supported the ancient Babylonians who burned those who would not "wear the flag of the state on their lapels" so to speak.

President Bush and his likeminded republicans have done so much harm to our reputation as a great nation, to our people, to our environment and to our world that the many times Pres. Bush speaks the name of "God" or places his hand over his heart to show allegiance to our great symbol is a hollow meaningless gesture from a empty shell of a man both intellectually and spiritually.

Among many other things, I served in the military because I believe as a member of this great nation it was my duty. I honestly pay my taxes because I believe as a member of this great nation it is my duty. I do not wear a flag lapel pin (although I would--never even crossed my mind one way or another that people like you were going around making this judgment--but I now know I want to get into the flag lapel business) but I am as patriotic as any American and I do not look for superficial conventions to prove my or others patriotism.

To finish, I tell you that I respect and admire John McCain. He is a great American and if he is elected he will be far superior to our current President and I would never stoop to behave like
Ann Coulter and take cheap shots at him.

Sincerely Loren M. Lambert

Give Me Medical Care or Give the Medical Industrial Complex Death

2008-06-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law confronted me on my support of Obama's health care plan. He represents a very conservative position. I represent a more radical solution. We both agree the American health care delivery system is a mess. He offered no solutions aside from suggesting that we abolish health insurance altogether--about as likely to happen without radical reform as abolishing apple pie. I, like him, have spent my time calmly walking in the ever tightening and comfortable circles of conservatism, but no more. The sad fact is that their comes a time when the few have amassed so much power and are so drunk with it that nothing short of revolution will pry it from their greedy hands. Such is the case with the medical industrial complex. We need a revolution. While I hope its not of the bloody French variety, it must nevertheless come, as bold, far reaching and forward looking as our own revolution was in 1776. Obama gives more promise of bringing that revolution to pass then McCain whose tiptoeing into the fray will invariably lead either to more of the same or a more stark change when it is too late for compromise.

Loren M. Lambert Copyright June 22, 2008

Clinton's Big Break

2008-06-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Is It Wrong to Marry a Fourteen Year Old Girl?

2008-05-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

After reading my blog on "Texas' Kibosh of Big Love" a fellow sauna hog asked me to answer this question, a question he disgustedly said was skirted by a polygamist on national television. It was this, "Is it wrong to marry a fourteen year old girl, especially to old men?" While I kept him waiting to the end of my argument--for my family and community who are not a captive audience--let me answer this question now and present my diatribe later.

Answer: No. Fourteen year old girls (or boys) generally should not marry--especially not my daughter and especially not to old men (unless she's eighteen, she consents and he is filthy rich and about to die and leave her and I everything). Moreover, no kid should have children or marry until age twenty or older and then only after passing an exam on the following subjects: balancing a checkbook, planning a budget on the groom's projected wage; the origin of electricity; the origin of pork; and on child bearing and child rearing. Also, before marriage and having children, both males and females should be subjected to a simulated birthing and should be confined for a year and forced to raise a monkey. Then after a drug free, drug-hair analyzes, and the monkey is potty trained and on its way to College, then they can get married.

Diatribe: But this is not because it is "wrong," for fourteen-year-olds to marry or that it's "right" they marry at some later age. Anything that must be prohibited or banned by the force of law because it is "wrong" "contrary to God's law," or is "offensive" should be left to the individual conscious as guided by a person's chosen religious persuasion or personal philosophy. Fourteen year old girls should not marry, not because it is wrong, but because of the harm such marriages cause to the parties involved and to society. However, if you asked me this question while I was chewing on a Gazelle hock 10,000 years ago when humans didn't have to learn computer science to bring home the bacon and lived to age 22, I may have had a different answer.

My fellow sauna hog also asked, "Is polygamy wrong?" Granted, its excesses and extremes are patently dysfunctional but the same can be said about many mainstream heterosexual monogamous relationships and many practices like--consecutive polygamy (a la Larry King), 70 year old millionaires marrying 24 year old girls, singles having multiple liaisons they justify because they are not constrained by marriage, or legalized brothels in Nevada, etc. So, is whatever family or relationship arrangement people choose wrong? This again is not the proper question.

A better question is, "Is the harm that polygamy causes sufficiently severe that we should sanction its practice by force of law?" Or, similarly, is monogamy "right?" When both these questions are addressed in civil society, outside of religious circles, they should not be analyzed in terms of "right" and "wrong," but in the context of their benefits and harmful consequences. Without endeavoring to engage in this analysis at this time but to provoke discussion, I will simple state that while I believe that monogamy is the ideal that our modern society should champion, reinforce and promote, there is nothing inherently evil about polygamy. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, monogamy has not been the norm throughout human history.

Consequently, when government is constrained as it should be from interfering with religious activities, it is not proper for a democratic diverse society to proscribe a practice merely because we find it offensive or unwise. So, as long as our governmental coffers are not burdened by Polygamy (or any other relationship choice) and the practice thereof is engaged in by fully consenting adults, it should be ignored and only discouraged by the strength of our superior ideas and exemplary examples. As to its extremes, our law enforcement should very assiduously prosecute its adherents who engage in welfare abuse and practice underage marriages. I suspect that if this were done, the superiority of monogamy as a choice would render polygamy a rare practice only engaged in by those it makes sense to in their individual circumstances.

Loren M. Lambert, Copyright May 31, 2008

I Am a Culturalist

2008-05-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

I am a culturalist. I am adverse to some cultural influences. I believe that some cultures (including our own), some subcultures and many micro-cultures, have negative elements that must be resisted. Cultural influences, like a diseases, are dangerous and are carried across borders by humankind.

I have experienced some of these dangers here in my our own back yard. Some immigrants would welcome a theocracy, others tribal vigilantism to enforce their religious laws, and still others a drug-cartel-culture of brutality and bribery.

Hence, although we should be tolerant and open to the world’s dispossessed, even if accused of bigotry, we must also be highly selective of those we invite to share in our way of life. If in our immigration policies we are not careful and reverse the trend I and perhaps others have experienced, we may find in the not so distant future that we too, as has occurred outside our borders, will have our police forces replaced by drug cartels, our neighborhoods terrorized by religious fanatics or our beliefs being dictated by a theocracy.

Loren M. Lambert (c)
May 22, 2008

The Idiots Guide to Voting

2008-05-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

Since I am not a presidential candidate nor an affable radio program host, I can safely say the truth without fear of losing my job or the votes of an unfortunately large block of Americans. This is it. Those who think that Senator Obama is unpatriotic, Godless and prejudiced against all non-blacks because he does not always wear a flag lapel pin, has attended a church with an undiplomatic pastor, and his wife once had the audacity to indicate that she has been less than proud of America, are ignorant.

This segment of our citizenry has never made any serious study of our mostly proud but checkered history nor ever thought too deeply about what it truly means to be an American who champions the equality of all and who honor humanity’s rights to civil liberties and freedom of speech, association, and religion. It is this same voting block that perhaps would have been persuaded by the unflaggingly patriotic rhetoric of Adolph Hitler who, not only always wore several flag lapel pins, ensured that all Germans wore their patriotism on their sleeves and swore their undivided and unquestioning allegiance to the Third Reich. That is not the kind of patriotism that any thinking American should admire.

So if you decide your vote based upon a candidate’s flag lapel pin, membership in some mainstream religion, CTR ring, WWJD ring, NRA membership and unblinking praise of all things American, you are an idiot. As an idiot, please feel free to continue the Bush legacy by voting for a president who talks of God, wears his patriotism on his sleeve and who blindly thinks that America is always right regardless of the morality of its choices. (Fortunately, neither Senators Obama, Clinton nor McCain fit this description--they are all thoughtful, patriotic Americans).

On the other hand, if your vote is based upon whether a candidate’s heart and actions would be worthy of the God you worship, bears his patriotism in the depths of his soul, and will lift and guide America into actions that will make it worthy of every living creatures praise and every American’s patriotism, than look beyond the superficialities and study the substance of the candidates’ positions. “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature. . . : for the Lord seeth not as man seeth: for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” I Samuel 16:7. If you do, I am confident that Senator Obama, despite his outward appearance, will be capable of winning your vote by appealing to both your heart and your intellect.

Loren M. Lambert (c) May 18, 2008

Blood Draw

2008-05-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago I had to have some blood drawn, which I hate. The technicians who draw blood are called phlebotomists. Not a user-friendly name. Anyway, usually blood draws from me go without a hitch and sometimes, with a really good phlebotomist, or just because on that particular day my nerve synapses are feeling lazy, I don't feel a thing. Most often I do. But on really bad days, when the phlebotomist is feeling frisky or I’m bouncing off the walls, it goes badly.

I pick a place from a list of labs my doctor gave me. I arrive early and am informed I have two choices, the hospital lab or a private lab up a couple of floors and over. I pick the hospital lab since I’m lazy and there already. I hand the receptionist my doc’s instructions and ask what it’s going to cost me. She doesn’t know and squints at me like I’m asking her the color of her panties.

"Is it cheaper up stairs?" I ask. She doesn’t know this either.

Looking bored and upset that she has a customer, she starts to ask me questions like we’re in forced couples therapy.

"You know," she says, "We have to ask all these questions. They don’t upstairs."

"So do I get a discount," I ask, "or a free shopping spree if I answer correctly?" She is not amused. Given the out, I tell her I’ll try my luck upstairs.

Once there, it’s no ninety-nine questions but neither do they know what it is going to cost me. Defeated I stay for the blood draw. Soon a green-lab-coated lady takes me in the room with the funny chair with the arm rest for blood draws. I imagine that it would be amusing to buy a couple for my clients to sit in at my law office just to let them know what they’re in for. I sit, roll up my sleeve, position my bare arm on the rest while she gets the needle ready. She paws my arm.

"Wow, you have great veins," she says.

"Thanks," I acknowledge. "I was the vein model for the last Grey’s Anatomy tome."

"No," she gasps, "That was my favorite."

"Yep. That was me."

"Wow," she continues, "So what about, huh, the huh."

"Yep, me too." She blushes.

"You’re kidding," she states.

"Yes, sorry. I am," I admit.

"You’re funny. You almost had me going. Well, here goes," she states as she plunges in with the needle. It hurts.

"Oh, that’s weird," she comments.

"What?" I ask.

"Look, no blood. Let’s see," she says as she starts probing around with the needle under my skin.

That’s when I looked. I don’t know if it was what I said that holds the clue or seeing the needle probe around like a sci-fi-under-skin creepy crawler, but I remember saying, "That hurts," and that’s all. I came to with a cold pack on my head and one of those nasty ammonia sticks thrust to my nostrils. I apologize for passing out. She then mentions that she found out that her lab is cheaper for blood draws and testing than the hospital’s but that the cost of the cold pack and smelling salts would bring it up to be about the same. Since I didn’t authorize them, I ask her if they have to go on my bill. She says yes because she had implied consent while I was unconscious.

I then start to leave.

"Where you going?" she asks.

"You didn’t get any blood?" I ask.

"No," she answers.

"So, can we use the same needle and cold pack to save on expenses?"

"No," she responds smiling. I groan and roll up my other sleeve.

"Don’t worry," she soothes as she gets the second needle ready, "It was a bad needle."

"So how much for a lobotomy?" I jokingly ask. Her eyes light up.

"How did you know I have been trained to do those?" she asks.

"Well phlebotomist sounds like lobotomist."

"Bingo," she says, "I'll Tell you what, if you pass out again, I’ll assume I have implied consent and I’ll do it for free."

Now I’m worried.

Loren M. Lambert
© May 11, 2008

Big Texas Puts The Kibosh on Big Love and; Texas’ Latest National Export: Pre-Emptive Foster Parenting

2008-04-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Years ago, "Tex," a fellow river guide at the Teton Canoe Base, always proudly introduced himself as being from Texas where everything was Big except him. Tex’s Texas is still living up to that tradition. Big Texas gave us Big President Bush, who gave us a Big Pre-emptive War Policy, which gave us a Big Torture Policy, which gave us a Big Backlash with a Big Black Eye, which is ending in a Big Mess.

So, it should come as no surprise, that as a result of a Big Rosita Swinton Lie, the Texas Rangers, wearing their Big Cowboy Hats, driving their Big Assault Vehicles have created their own Big Pre-emptive War and have rounded up a Big Pack a’ Polygamist Kids so they could show how Big they were by putting the Big Kibosh on their Big Texas Love problem.

But unlike Texas, Tex, spry as he was, had a Big Heart who knew how to delicately handle difficult situations and most everybody liked him. He was the best thing ever to come out of Texas in many a decade. Where ever he is, let’s be grateful when Big Bush leaves the Big White House and goes on some endless Big Quail Hunt with Big Dick Cheney. And let’s hope that Little Tex returns to Big Texas, where everything is Big but him, and gives it his Big Texas Heart before Big Texas continues its Big Pre-emptive War against all the polygamist children which, despite Texas' Big Intentions, is guaranteed to create another Big Texas Mess.

Loren M. Lambert
© April 23, 2008

It is so ironic that the same State that through its emissary President Bush, brought us rendition, sanctioned torture, and pre-emptive war, has commenced another pre-emptive war. Over a century ago in Reynolds v. United States, the US Supreme Court upheld federal laws criminalizing the practice of polygamy and ruled that while beliefs are constitutionally protected, "offensive" practices were not. Now the Texas authorities are turning Reynolds on its head by reasoning that since all FLDS children are being brought up in polygamy, that this is tantamount to abuse and that all polygamist children will inevitably become abusers and victims. While it’s a tantalizing argument with some practical validity, in the US we have traditionally resisted punishing people because of what some well-meaning Cowboys in big hats thought someone might do. If this same logic was applied to all wayward parents who have in some respect found themselves on the wrong side of the law and would thereby pass on their unfavorable traits to their children, we should see the likes of Chelsea Clinton and more than a few Bush kids being shuffled off into foster homes.

Loren M. Lambert © April 23, 2008

"God's Chosen"

2008-04-03T10:27:00.001-07:00

A local Christian Bible bookstore, at 7200 South State Street, has a street ad proclaiming, "Chosen By God, Get Use to it." I’m not exactly quite sure what this message means or what it has to do with selling Bibles or spreading the good word, but it doesn’t remotely sound like anything Christ would have said. What happened to, "Blessed are the poor . . . , the meek . . ., the merciful . . . , [and] the peacemakers . . . ?"

Many of the self-proclaimed, "God’s Chosen," rant on national television, with hate pulsing from their tumid temples, that God is inflicting Katrinas on the Nation’s wicked. To them I would ask, when the lowly Man of Grief, the Lamb of God roamed the quiet fields of Israel, did he damn the humble sinners or the "chosen" in their lofty seats of power?

And if his most harsh words were reserved for the latter, will God more severely condemn the misdeeds of the downtrodden and misguided or the many Christians in positions of influence who arrogantly assert that they are "God’s chosen" and who stand with their boots upon the necks of the meek beseeching, "get use to it?"

May I suggest that a more compelling pitch to sell Bibles would be, "Come, let us wash your weary feet, and help lighten your heavy burdens."

Loren M. Lambert
March 31, 2008 ©

ERISA: License to Cheat, Lie and Steal for The Disability Insurance Industry

2008-03-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

ERISA: License to Cheat, Lie and Steal for The Disability Insurance Industry

I. Introduction

There is an increasingly popular notion that modern litigation is an evil that must be stamped out at all costs. This belief has not only been propounded by the uninformed, but has been championed by some of our leading legal scholars, judges and legislators. They have sought to rarefy litigation by creating unnecessary legal complexity, stripping litigation of its essential components, gutting administrative agencies of staff and money, limiting attorneys’ fees, and completely eliminating adjudication of some claims.

This trend is reminiscent of individuals who desire optimum physical health without exercise or moderate consumption. All that is needed is a bit of surgery, some electrical stimulation, copious amounts of cellulite reducing cream and the latest magic pharmacopeia. This same approach is applied to litigation. The power brokers propose that optimum justice can be obtained through radical surgery, intellectual sophistry, copious amounts of judicial neglect, and a magic statutory bullet here or there. The problem is that, just as optimal physical health requires consistent physical activity and disciplined consumption, adequate justice also requires vigorous intellectual labor and disciplined processes. This will be true as long as imperfect beings live in a defective world.

Hence, litigation, while less than perfect, should not be a byword to be whispered in quiet places beyond the hearing of the young, weak, and uneducated. Moreover, in the long run, modern litigation is neither inefficient nor evil. Litigation is the machine of justice, exquisitely crafted, well oiled and highly refined through centuries of evolution and fine tuning. Many of its components are necessary elements in our modern world. Contrarily, trial by ordeal, used in past centuries, though quick to churn out resolutions, was inefficient, brutal and arbitrary. To the other extreme, the dismantling and disfigurement of our modern system of litigation into some effete, feeble but seemingly more efficient administrative or arbitrative process controlled by insurance corporations or governmental agencies, is, in the long run, as inefficient, brutal and arbitrary as was trial by ordeal–except that the deepest pocket, and not the more cunning combatant, usually wins.

As will be argued, ERISA (the acronym for the misnamed, "Employee Retirement Income Security Act) has created a brutal, arbitrary and inefficient administrative process that is controlled by the insurance industry. ERISA governs employee welfare benefit programs1 that consist of "any plan, fund, or program . . . established or maintained by an employer" to provide benefits through an insurance policy.2 This article concerns ERISA’s application to employment short term and long term disability plans (Plans). Supposedly, Congress created ERISA "to promote the interests of employees and their beneficiaries in employee benefit plans and to protect contractually defined benefits.3 However, this federal legislation would be more aptly named the "Enforcement of Revenues for Insurance Companies Security Act." The fact is ERISA does not secure employees’ rights to disability benefits. Instead, it is ill-conceived legislation that gives insurance companies the opportunity to cheat, lie, and steal.

II. Essential Components of Modern Litigation

Adequate adjudication of a conflict has several essential fundamental components including: (1) the availability of the discovery process, (2) the right to probe the materiality, competency and credibility of evidence, and (3) the right to present a dispute for resolution to an impartial fact finder. The elimination of any of these components in litigation invites deception and produces injustice.

III. Discovery Under ERISA

Under ERISA, through medical records requests, peer-to-peer contacts, medical record reviews, medical evaluations, medical examinations, medical testing, employment record requests, Social Security record requests, and surreptitious surveillance, the insurance company has unfettered access to information regarding a claimant when evaluating his or her application for disability benefits.

Contrarily, the claimant is mostly barred from obtaining any information through discovery about the insurance company’s decision making process. A claimant challenging a denial of benefits is only permitted to obtain what the Plan Administrator and/or insurance company designates as the administrative file. Hence, the first disfigurement to the machine of justice in an ERISA case is its jettison of the discovery process.

A. Importance of Discovery

"The objectives (of discovery) are to enhance the truth-seeking process . . . , to eliminate surprises . . . Its legitimate function is to furnish evidence, and the ultimate objective of pretrial discovery is to make available to all parties, in advance of trial, all relevant facts which might be admitted into trial."4

B. The Standard of Review in ERISA Administrative Appeals

When a claimant appeals an insurance company’s denial of disability benefits under ERISA, the Federal District Court reviews the claimant’s cause of action under either: (1) an arbitrary and capricious standard of review, (2) a "sliding scale/conflict of interest" arbitrary and capricious standard of review, or (3) a de novo standard of review. In Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch5, the Supreme Court held that "a denial of benefits . . . is to be reviewed under a de novo standard unless the benefit plan gives the administrator . . . discretionary authority to determine eligibility for benefits or to construe the terms of the plan."6 If discretionary authority exists, which is usually the case,7 then the proper standard of review is abuse of discretion.8
In Lunt v. Metlife, Case No. 2:05-cv-784, Judge Tena Campbell of the Federal District Court of Utah, in a memorandum decision, stated, "Because the Tenth Circuit has been ‘comparatively liberal in construing language to trigger the more deferential standard of review under ERISA,’ plan language which requires a claimant to offer proof of disability satisfactory to the Plan Administrator (and thereby the insurance company) triggers the arbitrary and capricious review. Consequently, any language in the Plan indicating that the Plan Administrator (and thereby the insurance company) has discretion to interpret and apply the Plan creates this rather lenient standard of review." (Citations omitted.)

1. Arbitrary and Capricious Standard of Review

Under the arbitrary and capricious standard of review, the court’s review is limited to the evidence and arguments that were presented during the administrative claim and appeal process with the insurance company.9 "In effect, a curtain falls when the fiduciary completes its review, and for purposes of determining if substantial evidence supported the decision, the district court must evaluate the record as it was at the time of the decision."10 The Tenth Circuit has justified this bar to discovery stating:

A primary goal of ERISA was to provide a method for workers and beneficiaries to resolve disputes over benefits inexpensively and expeditiously. Permitting or requiring district courts to consider evidence from both parties that was not presented to the Plan Administrator would seriously impair the achievement of that goal.11

Consequently, when the appropriate standard of review is arbitrary and capricious, a claimant’s right to discovery is limited to the administrative record. The administrative record is generated by the claimant, the insurance company and Plan Administrator prior to litigation. Most short-term and long-term disability plans have a two- to three-step administrative appeal process.

Ostensibly, one may surmise that an adequate remedy to any discovery deficiencies would be to submit any information during the administrative process that was arguably supportive of a claim for disability and to also request discovery information from the insurance company and the Plan Administrator. Although there are exceptions, in practice, this strategy is inadequate for several reasons.

Most claimants do not hire an attorney during the administrative process.12 They intuitively believe that, like most disputes, if they can’t work it out on their own they can later hire an attorney and sue. Also, when disabled and forced to leave work on disability, many claimants quickly become bankrupt. Consequently, they cannot afford to obtain adequate medical and vocational support for their disability application and surmise that legal representation is beyond their reach.13 They often have the misguided impression that, as long as they submit their own physician’s opinions and a few medical records supporting their diagnosis, they will obtain benefits. While in an obvious disability case this is true, when there is any dispute regarding a diagnosis or impairment and its disabling effects, the insurance company usually resolves that doubt in its favor. It does this by taking advantage of the claimant’s naivety and by using the exclusive power ERISA has given it to exercise its discretion to develop a reasonable excuse for its denial.

Once this is done, even when claimants do obtain legal representation, it is extremely difficult to contest the insurance company’s denial. While competent legal advocacy increases the chances of a successful outcome, a reasonably sophisticated and careful insurance company can summarily deny almost all appeals and immunize their decision from reversal in federal district court. This is true because under ERISA, regardless of the merits of a disability claim, to prevail a claimant must show that the insurance company’s decision was unreasonable and/or only supported by a scintilla of evidence.

In other words, under the arbitrary and capricious standard, "the [insurance company’s] decision will be upheld so long as it is predicated on a reasoned basis."14 In essence, "[t]he Administrators’ decision need not be the only logical one nor even the best one. It need only be sufficiently supported by facts within their knowledge. . . ."15 Courts "will not substitute [their] judgment for the judgment of the [Administrators] unless the actions of the [Administrators] are not grounded on any reasonable basis."16

Under this standard during the administrative process an insurance company can usually create a reasonable, and therefore legally irrefutable, explanation for its denial of benefits. This is especially the case because, if the claimant requests discovery information during the administrative process to try to uncover evidence demonstrating that the evaluation process is arbitrary, the Plan Administrator and its insurance company will deny the discovery request. It will argue that the very same federal case law prohibiting discovery in an ERISA claim during litigation, bars such requests.

Currently, except as noted below, there is scant federal case law regarding the right to discovery during the administrative process. As a consequence, attempting discovery during the administrative process does not catapult the claimant into a position to use discovery during litigation to expose shoddy, underhanded or dishonest insurance practices that are implemented to deny claims.

2. The "Sliding Scale" Standard of Review

In two seminal cases, Jones v. The Kodak Medical Assistance Plan, and Kimber v. Thiokol Corp. Disability Benefits Plan, both decided in 1999, the 10th Circuit, regarding actual conflicts of interest, stated, "[b]efore applying the sliding scale, a court must decide whether there was a conflict of interest."17 and, "there must first be evidence of a conflict of interest."18 To determine whether a conflict of interest exists, Jones directs the District Court to consider whether: "(1) the plan is self-funded; (2) the company funding the plan appointed and compensated the plan administrator; (3) the plan administrator’s performance reviews or level of compensation were linked to the denial of benefits; and (4) the provisions of benefits has a significant economic impact on the company administering the plan."19 Jones further states that, "[i]f the court concludes that the plan administrator’s dual role jeopardized his impartiality, his discretionary decisions must be viewed with less deference." Id.

In Fought v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of America20 the 10th Circuit held that where an insurer is both funding and administering claims, it is operating under an inherent conflict of interest. Consequently, the District Court is to review the Plan Administrator or insurance company’s decision with a lesser degree of deference to the insurer’s decision. The court in Fought stated: "The district court must take a hard look at the evidence and arguments presented to the Plan Administrator to ensure that the decision was a reasoned application of the terms of the plan to the particular case, untainted by the conflict of interest." However, the Plan Administrator or insurance company’s decision is to be given even less deference if Plan Administrator is also shown to have a serious, actual conflict of interest.

Then, in Allison v. Unum21 the 10th Circuit court stated that even though the lessened deference is required in such circumstance, "In reviewing a Plan Administrator's decision under the arbitrary and capricious standard, we are limited to the 'administrative record'--the materials compiled by the administrator in the course of making his decision."22

Consequently, in the 10th Circuit, discovery is not allowed, even when there is an inherent or actual conflict of interest. This bar to discovery is in direct contradiction to additional 10th Circuit Court pronouncements about these "sliding scale" reviews.

The Tenth Circuit has adopted a two-step approach for dealing with conflicts of interest in ERISA cases. (There is one medical benefits denial case in which the Utah Federal District Court Judge did allow discovery in a "sliding scale" standard of review ERISA case.)23 First, the court must determine whether a conflict of interest exists because "[t]he possibility of an administrator operating under a conflict of interest . . . changes the [arbitrary and capricious] analysis." Fought,24 see also Adamson v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of Am.,25 As the Supreme Court noted, "if a benefit plan gives discretion to an administrator or fiduciary who is operating under a conflict of interest, that conflict must be weighed as a ‘facto[r] in determining whether there is an abuse of discretion.’" Firestone.26 Second, if there is a conflict of interest, the court must decide what reduction from the arbitrary and capricious standard is warranted. "The reduction correlates with the extent to which the conflict jeopardized the administrator’s impartiality. Fought.27

Under this second step, the claimant bears the burden of proving that the impartiality was jeopardized. "The fact that [defendant] administered and insured the group term life insurance portion of this plan does not on its own warrant a further reduction in deference." Adamson.28 Rather, "[s]ome proof (supplied by the claimant) must identify a conflict that could plausibly jeopardize the Plan Administrator’s impartiality." Id.

The schematic set forth in these cases begs the question: how can a claimant, who is barred from conducting discovery, provide proof that the inherent or actual conflict jeopardized the Plan Administrator’s impartiality? Granted, while there are the rare cases when evidence of a serious conflict is readily available in the administrative record as in Flinders v. Workforce Stab. Plan, Phillips Petrol,29 this is a rare event. Under usual circumstances, is the insurance company going to offer up, as part of the administrative record, evidence that in order to save revenues it pressures its agents to deny claims by basing their promotions, pay and bonuses upon claim denials? Is it going to voluntarily provide information that it deliberately selects and manipulates expert witnesses so that they invariably support its denials? Is it going to divulge its procedures and protocols that indicate that certain claims are denied due to arbitrary impairment duration guidelines? No. Although this practitioner has also found evidence of such practices in the rare cases that discovery was allowed or in non-ERISA cases, this will only happen when ERISA is amended to allow discovery.

3. De Novo Standard of Review

Most circuits have adopted rules allowing the admission of additional evidence in de novo cases in limited circumstances such as when there was a conflict of interest. 30 The most thorough explanation of this position has been provided by the Fourth Circuit in Quesinberry,31 which held that allowing a district court to exercise its discretion to admit additional evidence in de novo cases under certain circumstances best reconciles ERISA’s competing purposes of efficiency and fairness.32

In, Jewell V. LINA,33 the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals stated:

A party seeking to introduce evidence from outside the administrative record bears a significant burden in establishing that he may do so. In particular, (1) the evidence must be "necessary to the district court's de novo review;" (2) the party offering the extra-record evidence must "demonstrate that it could not have been submitted to the plan administrator at the time the challenged decision was made;" (3) the evidence must not be "[c]umulative or repetitive;" nor (4) may it be "evidence that `is simply better evidence than the claimant mustered for the claim review.'" Hall, 300 F.3d at 1203 (quoting Quesinberry, 987 F.2d at 1027).(fn2) Even then, "district courts are not required to admit additional evidence when these circumstances exist because a court `may well conclude that the case can be properly resolved on the administrative record without the need to put the parties to additional delay and expense.'" Id.

For guidance in evaluating the necessity of extra-record evidence, we listed in Hall several examples of the "exceptional circumstances" which "could warrant the admission of additional evidence." Id. Those situations include claims that require consideration of complex medical questions or issues regarding the credibility of medical experts; the availability of very limited administrative review procedures with little or no evidentiary record; the necessity of evidence regarding interpretation of the terms of the plan rather than specific historical facts; instances where the payor and the administrator are the same entity and the court is concerned about impartiality; claims which would have been insurance contract claims prior to ERISA; and circumstances in which there is additional evidence that the claimant could not have presented in the administrative process. Id. (quoting Quesinberry, 987 F.2d at 1027). These are not exceptions to the Hall rule; they are merely examples of circumstances that might militate in favor of a finding of necessity. The existence of one or more of these circumstances does not make extra-record evidence automatically admissible, for if it did, then supplementation of the record would not be limited to unusual cases or extraordinary circumstances. This would "undermin[e] the goal of not making district courts `substitute plan administrators.'" Id. at 1206 (quoting Quesinberry, 987 F.2d at 1025). District courts must conduct analysis case-by-case to determine whether all four prongs of the test are met.
. . . .
. . . [T]he term "necessary," as we used it in Hall, must be "harmonized with its context." Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126, 130, 65 S.Ct. 165, 89 L.Ed. 118 (1944). We are guided by our qualification in Hall, following the Fourth Circuit's opinion in Quesinberry, that extra-record evidence may be admitted when "`necessary to conduct an adequate de novo review of the benefit decision.'" Hall, 300 F.3d at 1202 (emphasis added) (quoting Quesinberry, 987 F.2d at 1025). If, for instance, the administrator based its decision on information not in the record— perhaps on principles generally known within the medical community—the district court likely could not meaningfully review the decision without the admission of that evidence. Or if the court cannot understand abstruse medical terminology central to the issues of a case, the claimant may supplement the record with explanatory evidence. Likewise, if the administrator simply neglected to include in the record exhibits the claimant had submitted to it, those may be offered to the district court. (Even "necessary" evidence, however, may only be admitted if the other three prongs of the Hall test are satisfied. The consequences of a record insufficient to allow meaningful review will be borne by the party responsible for the insufficiency.)

In Hall v. UNUM,34 the district court held a bench trial in which the scope of review was expanded beyond the administrative record. In its review of that decision the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the District Court, stating that additional discovery is allowed, "[W]hen circumstances clearly established that additional evidence is necessary to conduct an adequate de novo review of the benefit decision."35

In a similar case, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California allowed discovery in a de novo case on: "(1) information necessary to demonstrate ‘the manner in or extent to which the conflict of interest affected UNUM’s decision-making process’ and ‘address any shortcomings in the record or decision-making process caused by the conflict [of interest],’ and (2) information regarding the independence or neutrality of the physicians utilized by UNUM for medical opinions relative to [Plaintiff’s] disability claim."36 The court reasoned, "[T]hese categories of information appear reasonably related to the claims and defenses in this case, and may lead to evidence that the District Judge may permit to be admitted at the time of summary judgment or trial."37

In Leahy v. Allied Stores Corp, 801 F. Supp. 529, 540 (1992) this Utah Federal District Court, applying a de novo standard of review stated, "Where the decision-maker stands to gain from a denial of benefits, there may be incentive to base the denial on less than all of the available evidence. Under such circumstances, courts should be hesitant to limit the scope of review to the evidence considered by the decision-maker." Although it appears this case has not been directly overturned, in view of Jewell , its applicability is questionable.

Therefore regarding the de novo standard of review and discovery, while the authority may seem to provide a glimmer of fairness for claimants, this limited allowance of discovery is rare. This is so because the disability insurance industry has, by the stroke of the pen, quickly modified most Plans to grant the Plan Administrators discretionary authority. Moreover, even in de novo cases, the Federal Judge has discretion to allow discovery. That discretion is exercised sparingly.

C. Essential Topics for Discovery

In summary, discovery is, for all intents and purposes, rare in ERISA cases. Discovery is, however, essential in all ERISA disability cases when disability benefits have been denied. In such cases a claimant should be allowed discovery to obtain: (a) the guidelines and other criterion used by Plan Administrators/insurance company to evaluate a claimant’s disabilities and application for benefits; (b) information about the compensation and manner that medical and vocational experts are selected; (c) the qualifications and competency of selected medical and vocational experts, and (d) information regarding the way the claims adjustors are evaluated in conjunction with their denial and approval rate of claims.

1. Guidelines and Criterion

In evaluating particular illnesses, diseases, syndromes, and injuries that are known to cause disabilities, insurance companies often use various guidelines that allegedly predict the severity and duration of particular disabling conditions. These guidelines are often applied by rote to disability claims without regard to the individual circumstances of the particular claimant. For instance, if a particular illness or disease has an average disabling duration among the general population of 6 months, insurance adjusters will arbitrarily apply that period of time to determine how long a claimant should receive disability benefits. Without access to this information, a claimant cannot demonstrate that a guideline is obsolete, incorrect or does not apply in their case. Under such circumstances, this is relevant information that would demonstrate the arbitrariness of the insurance company’s reliance thereon, but is nevertheless not allowed to be discovered.

2. The Compensation, Selection, and Qualifications Of Medical and Vocational Experts.

Most attorneys and legal experts recognize that if one party in a legal dispute has the exclusive ability to select experts to render opinions regarding any particular disputed matter and those selected experts are given irrefutable and controlling weight in the dispute, such a process will invariably lead to a result oriented selection of experts with predictable outcomes. Under ERISA this is, in fact, what happens. During the administrative process, the insurance company selects the medical and vocational experts that evaluate the claimant’s disability. In so doing the insurance company is able, through the power of the pocket and the protections of ERISA, to select those experts whose dispositions and philosophies are most closely aligned with the insurance company’s interests and who consistently support the Plan Administrator and/or insurance company’s denial. While during the administrative process a claimant may provide their own expert’s opinion rebutting the insurance company’s experts’ opinions, such submissions are usually futile.

This is true for several reasons. First under the arbitrary and capricious standard of review, discovery is not allowed to probe the unreliability, incompetency, or bias of the Plan Administrator and/or insurance company’s experts’ opinions. And second, pursuant to all standards of review in ERISA cases, so long as the Plan Administrator and/or insurance company’s experts’ opinions has some modicum or semblance of validity, it rules the day. As set forth above, ERISA has no mechanism to independently resolve medical disputes of fact and opinion. To the contrary, the Plan Administrator and insurance companies’ decisions and its selected experts are given the benefit of the doubt in any dispute and therefore any plausible denial of benefits is upheld by the District Court.

As the Supreme Court explained, "courts have no warrant to require administrators automatically to accord special weight to the opinions of a claimant’s physician; nor may courts impose on Plan Administrators a discrete burden of explanation when they credit reliable evidence that conflicts with a treating physician’s evaluation."38 Hence, as long as the Plan Administrator and/or insurance company finds some doctor or vocational expert somewhere, no matter how competent they are or reliable their methods, if they conclude the claimant is not disabled and able to work, benefits will be denied and its decision is not subject to reversal.

Empowered by this unfair schematic under ERISA, Plan Administrators and their insurance companies have, in fact, set up their own expert witness pools that they exclusively use for result oriented denials. Often these experts cursorily review the medical evidence, cherry pick only that information which supports a denial of benefits, have underlings conduct the examinations using their signature stamp, do not physically examine or evaluate the claimant themselves, and apply outdated medical criterions and testing. Many of these experts are either directly or indirectly under the supervisory influence of the insurance company. The vast majority of these experts earn millions of dollars of income from providing these evaluations and yet supposedly have full-time jobs in the medical industry to such an extent that it is improbable they are competently and fairly conducting these expert evaluations.

The reality of human nature is that what can go wrong will go wrong. There is no human being, organization or entity that is perfect or incorruptible. If the lights of the discovery process are therefore not shown upon the process that insurance companies use to evaluate claims, they can act deceptively and they will act deceptively because insurance companies are as prone to imperfection as the general population. These insurance corporations and their agents will and do commit errors because of: the motive to maximize profits, bias, prejudices, human error, ego, simple slothfulness, and sometimes outright fraud. Without the indispensable cog of discovery in the machine of justice, rarely, if ever, will such injustices be uncovered by claimants.

IV. Right To Present Evidence in Open Court and To Conduct Cross-examination

As set forth above, under ERISA there is no court trial of a denial of disability benefits. The claimant therefore never presents expert or lay testimony in open court about their limitations, pain, or fatigue to an independent, impartial fact finder or cross examines the insurance company’s agents and experts. The Judge only considers the administrative record.

"Cross examination is invaluable as a test of the accuracy, truthfulness and credibility of testimony."39 "Cross examination is a fundamental trial right in our judicial system and is an essential element of a fair trial and the proper administration of justice."40 "The right to cross examination has been called absolute and not a mere privilege. This right is also basic to our judicial system; its preservation is essential to the proper administration of justice; and it is a valuable fundamental and substantial right; to be jealously guarded."41 Dean Wigmore characterizes cross-examination as "beyond any doubt, the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth."42 Moreover, since at least the time of Blackstone, it has been felt that the goal of evidentiary reliability can best be assured by testing the evidence in the "crucible of cross examination."43

If this is true, why do we, the American public, and we, as members of the bar, accept without a fight this gutting of our administration of justice, and blithely give in to the argument that efficiency for the insurance industry is more important than basic fairness?

V. Right to An Impartial Decision Maker

As set forth above, in reviewing a denial of a claim for ERISA benefits, in litigation, the Federal District Court Judge resolves the dispute through motions practice and not a trial. In reviewing these motions, "the court does not examine defendant’s motion under the traditional summary judgment standard. . . . Instead, the court acts as an appellate court and evaluates the reasonableness of a Plan Administrator or fiduciary’s decision based on the evidence contained in the administrative record."44 Hence, the Federal Judge does not sit to adjudicate the case, the Judge merely determines if the insurance company’s denial metaphorically stinks so bad that it cannot be tolerated.

This point is highlighted when, in Roach v. Prudential Insurance, Civil No. 2:00-CV-00239, Utah Federal District Court Judge Dee Benson, in reviewing Prudential’s request to dismiss the case stated, ". . . I may be tempted in a case like this to find that [Ms. Roach] in my view is disabled, candidly. It seems like there is a very good case here to be made for her disability, but in light of this standard . . . my job is only to see if there was some rational basis to support this even if I don’t agree with it. . . . [I]t seems like this system is harsher than our judicial system . . . [I]t would be nice in an ideal world if someone could go back to Prudential and say ‘do you want to take another look at this? I don’t think she is faking it here.’"

Prudential’s own attorney, Mr. Jon C. Martinson, of Fabian and Clendenin, stated, "[W]e need to remember that under [ERISA’s] arbitrary and capricious standard the Court affords the administrator’s discretion in their review based on the administrative record. We are not here to determine whether [Ms. Roach] was disabled under our understanding. . . . I don’t think any of us does not sympathize with [Ms. Roach] . . . The law requires us to make a counterintuitive decision in this case . . . It is not our call and it is not the District Court’s call and it is not the Tenth Circuit’s call. . . . [T]he way [ERISA] is now we’re going to have to trade unfortunate and hopefully rare situations like this for overall efficiency."

Therefore, in most cases, as noted in local Attorney Brian S. King’s, "How ERISA Plan Administrators and Fiduciaries Make a Plaintiffs Lawyer’s Life Easier," 45 in order to litigate and win a denial of benefits, it is more a matter of exploiting mistakes, and not whether "the claimant [is] disabled."

This is a curious thing. It is probable that insurance company’s would never tolerate a system to resolve disputes between them and their insured in which the insured had the exclusive right to resolve the dispute and be upheld so long as the insured’s decision was reasonable. Why is it then fair to allow insurance companies this same pleasure? It is hard to imagine how any person, entity or government would ever find such a system to be acceptable. It is most likely that this has been allowed under ERISA because few care about or find themselves a member of this small underclass and politically powerless group of individuals who are disabled and denied benefits.

VI. Adding Insult to Injury

A. What the Plan Administrator and/or Insurance Company Giveth, It Taketh Away

To add insult to injury, under ERISA employers are allowed to cancel insurance programs outright even after an employee has worked for years for a company, paid premiums for disability coverage through their employment, and gone out on disability. ERISA allows companies to terminate disability benefits because they are neither vested nor accrued.46 This is because Congress determined that vesting requirements for welfare plans, "would seriously complicate the administration and increase the cost of plans whose primary function is to provide retirement income."47 Instead, Congress intended employers to be free to create, modify, or terminate the terms and conditions of employee welfare benefit plans as inflation, changes in medical practice and technology, and the costs of treatment dictate.48

B. Purchasing Swamp Land On Mars.

The final injustices in ERISA disability plans are their offset provisions. Most, if not all ERISA Plans offset any benefit awarded by entitlements from other sources. For instance, if a claimant gets $1000 a month in Social Security Disability benefits, this amount will offset the monthly ERISA Plan disability benefit. Consequently, if the monthly disability benefit is $1000 or less, no disability benefit will be paid unless there is a Plan provision that provides for a minimum benefit. Some plans have such minimums (usually $100) but many do not. Hence, many employees’ premiums may as well have been spent buying real estate on Mars.

VII Conclusion

It is hard to conceive of any knowledgeable advocate who would voluntarily agree to submit a client’s dispute for determination in a process in which the opponent was granted all the advantages that ERISA gives insurance companies in a disability benefits dispute. So why does any respectable member of the bar, legislature or judiciary subscribe to any notion that ERISA is anything more that an abomination and affront to our collective sense of justice and in effect a license to Cheat, Lie and Steal for the Disability Insurance Industry?

Some may cry that this article sets unnecessarily alarmist tone. However, a recent Georgetown University Health Policy Institute conducted a study found that under the arbitrary and capricious standard of review, the insured prevailed in only 28.4% and when the court applied a de novo standard of review, the insured prevailed 65.9% of the time. Also, not surprisingly, as discussed in a law review article,49 a 1995 internal memorandum from Provident Insurance Company revealed that ERISA provided huge economic advantages to the insurance industry especially due to the application of the deferential standard of review and that had ERISA applied to12 claims that where we settled for $7.8 million in the aggregate, Unum’s liability would have been between zero and $0.5 million. There are also, hundreds of punitive damage cases that have demonstrated the insurance companies will go to great lengths to manipulate claims to defraud their insurers. None of these cases would have likely come to light under ERISA.

To restore justice to this area of law, I call upon all fair minded members of our citizenry to end that injustice before you or someone you know or love is the next victim of its efficiency.

1. See 29 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq.
2. 29 U.S.C. § 1002(1); see Donovan v. Dillingham, 688 F.2d 1367, 1371 (11th Cir.
1982).
3. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S. 101, 113, 109 S. Ct. 948, 956 (1989)
(citations and quotations omitted); see also 29 U.S.C. 1001 (listing the congressional
findings and declaration of policy regarding ERISA); Dixon v. Life Ins. Co. of N. Am.,
389 F.3d 1179, 1184 (11th Cir. 2004) ("ERISA's purpose [is] to promote the interests of
employees and their beneficiaries.").
4. 27 Corpus Juris Secundum §2b
5. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S. 101, 109 S.Ct. 948, 103 L.Ed.2d 80
(1989)
6. Firestone, 489 U.S. at 115, 109 S.Ct. 948.
7. Due to the case law established in Firestone, most insurance companies through the
Plan Administrators have, by the stroke of a pen, granted themselves discretionary
authority and it is rare that the de novo standard of review, which allow the claimant more
parity, applies.
8. Id.
9. E.g., Allison v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of Am., 381 F.3d 1015, 1021 (10th Cir. 2004); and
see Chambers v. Family Health Plan Corp., 100 F.3d 818, 823-824 (10th Cir. 1996);
Sandoval v. Aetna Life and Cas. Ins. Co., 967 F.2d 377, 380-81 (10th Cir. 1992).
10. Sandoval, 967 F.2d at 823-24.
11. Sandoval, 967 F.2d at 380.
12. To increase the probability of success, a claimant should provide all helpful medical
information, obtain expert evaluations by medical and vocational specialist, submit
videotaped interviews, and when relevant, obtain employment records.
13. Many attorneys are willing to take these cases on a contingency basis.
14. Adamson, 455 F.3d at 1212.
15. Woolsey v. Marion Labs., Inc., 934 F.2d 1452, 1460 (10th Cir. 1991); see also Adamson,
455 F.3d at 1212 ("A lack of substantial evidence often indicates an arbitrary and capricious
decision. Substantial evidence is of the sort that a reasonable mind could accept as sufficient to
support a conclusion. Substantial evidence means more than a scintilla, of course, yet less than a
preponderance.") (citations omitted).
16. Woolsey, 934 F.2d at 1460 (quoting Oster v. Barco of Cal. Employees’ Ret. Plan, 869
F.2d 1215, 1218 (9th Cir. 1988)). Rather, "[t]he reviewing court ‘need only assure that
the administrator’s decision fall[s] somewhere on a continuum of reasonableness—even if
on the low end.’" Kimber v. Thiokol Corp., 196 F.3d 1092, 1098 (10th Cir. 1999)
(quoting Vega v. Nat’l Life Ins. Servs., Inc., 188 F.3d 287, 297 (5th Cir. 1999))
(alteration in original).
17. 169 F.3d 1287, 1289, (10th Cir. 1999).
18. 196 F.3d 1092 (10th Cir. 1999).
19. Jones at 1291.
20. Fought v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of America, 379 F.3d 997, 1006 (10th Cir. 2004)
21. Allison v. Unum, 381 F.3d at 1021 (10th Cir. 2004)
22. Id.
23. Nichols v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 259 F. Supp. 2d 1213,1221 (D. UT 2003)
24. In Nichols v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 259 F. Supp. 2d 1213 (D. UT 2003) the Utah
Federal District court, allowed discovery on the issue of conflict of interest in a sliding
scale arbitrary and capricious standard of review case when Plaintiff had requested
discovery during the claim review process and defendant refused to answer. In Nichols
the court stated, "Plaintiff is permitted . . . to seek discovery on the narrow issue of
whether a conflict of interest exists between the Plan Administrator of the plan and Wal-
Mart Stores, Inc., the plan sponsor" (emphasis in original). Id. at 1222.
25. Fought v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of America, 379 F.3d 997, 1003 (10th Cir. 2004)
26. Adamson v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of Am., 455 F.3d 1209, 1212 (10th Cir. 2006) ("We
do note that where a ‘standard’ conflict of interest exists, the Plan Administrator’s
decision is entitled to less deference, and the standard conflict is regarded ‘as one factor
in determining whether the Plan Administrator’s denial of benefits was arbitrary and
capricious.’") (quoting Fought, 379 F.3d at 1005)
27. Firestone, 489 U.S. at 115 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 187 cmt. d (1959))
(alteration in original).
28. Fought, 379 F.3d at 1004 ("‘[T]he reviewing court will always apply an arbitrary and
capricious standard, but the court must decrease the level of deference given to the conflicted
administrator’s decision in proportion to the seriousness of the conflict.’") (quoting Chambers v.
Family Health Plan Corp., 100 F.3d 818, 825 (10th Cir. 1996)).
29. Adamson, 455 F.3d at 1213 (emphasis added).
30. 491 F.3d 1180 (10th Cir. 2007)
31. See, e.g., DeFelice v. Am. Int'l Life Assurance Co. of N.Y., 112 F.3d 61, 65-67 (2d
Cir. 1997) (allowing the use of extra evidence if the Plan Administrator has a conflict of
interest); Mongeluzo v. Baxter Travenol Long Term Disability Benefit Plan, 46 F.3d 938,
943-44 (9th Cir. 1995) (allowing the use of extra evidence where the Plan Administrator
incorrectly interpreted the plan); Casey v. Uddeholm Corp., 32 F.3d 1094, 1098-99 (7th
Cir. 1994) (allowing a district court to consider additional evidence where the Plan
Administrator has made no fact-finding himself); S. Farm Bureau Life Ins. Co. v. Moore,
993 F.2d 98, 101-02 (5th Cir. 1993) (allowing the admission of extra evidence with
regards to plan interpretation by the administrator, but not with regards to the finding of
historical facts by the administrator); Donatelli v. Home Ins. Co., 992 F.2d 763, 765 (8th
Cir. 1993) (leaving the question of whether to admit extra evidence to the discretion of
the district court where there is "good cause" to admit additional information in order to
provide "adequate" review); Quesinberry v. Life Ins. Co. of N. Am., 987 F.2d 1017,
1021-27 (4th Cir. 1993) (en banc) (leaving the question of whether to admit extra
evidence to the discretion of the district court when it finds that exceptional
circumstances have been met and listing some of those circumstances); Luby v.
Teamsters Health, Welfare & Pension Trust Funds, 944 F.2d 1176, 1184-85 (3d Cir.
1991) (stating that the decision to admit additional evidence is within the district court's
discretion and was permissible in this case because there was no evidentiary record).
32. Id.
33. Id.
34. 508 F.3d 1303, 1309, 1311 (Fed. 10th Cir. 2007)
35. 300 F.3d 1197 (10th Circuit 2002)
36. Id at 1202.
37. Waggener v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. Of America, 238 F.Supp.2d 1179, 1187 (S.D.Cal.
2002).
38. Id.
39. 538 U.S. 822, 834 (2003)
40. Aluminum Industries v. Egan, 22 N.E. 2d 459, 462, 61 Ohio App. Ct. 111
41. 81 Am Jur § 771
42. 98 Corpus Juris Secundum §44.
43. 5 J. Wigmore, Evidence, § 1367 (Chadbourn Rev.1974)
44. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 61-62, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177
(2004).
45. Panther v. Synthes, 380 F. Supp. 2d 1198, 1207 n.9 (D. Kan. 2005)
46. Utah Trial Journal, Volume 30, No. 3. page 6-8.
47. Phillips v. Amoco Oil Co., 799 F.2d 1464, 1471 (11th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 481
U.S. 1016, 107 S.Ct. 1893, 95 L.Ed.2d 500 (1987). Unlike pension benefits, welfare
benefit plans neither vest nor accrue. See 29 U.S.C. § 1051(1); Vasseur v. Halliburton
Co., 950 F.2d 1002, 1006 (5th Cir.1992); Hozier v. Midwest Fasteners, Inc., 908 F.2d
1155, 1160 (3rd Cir.1990).
48. H.R.Rep. No. 807, 93rd Cong., 2d Sess. 60, reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4639,
4670, 4726; S.Rep. No. 383, 93rd Cong., 1st Sess. 51 reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N.
4890, 4935.
49. Moore v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 856 F.2d 488, 492 (2nd Cir.1988); see also
Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. Arrow v. Massachusetts, 471 U.S. 724, 732, 105 S.Ct. 2380,
2385, 85 L.Ed.2d 728 (1985) (ERISA "does not regulate the substantive content of
welfare-benefit plans").
50. "Trust Law as Regulatory Law: The Scandal and Judicial Review of Benefit Denials
Under ERISA," Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 101, p. 1315 (2007),
Professor John H. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale
University, at page 1321;
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/vl01/n3/1315/LR101n3Langbein.pdf

Utah's Cowboy Caucus Throws a Temper Tantrum

2008-03-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Utah's Cowboy Caucus Throws a Temper Tantrum

Recently the Conservative Caucus of the Utah House of Representatives (Cowboy Caucus) threw a public temper tantrum by taking out a full page ad in the Deseret Morning News against SUWA. The ad asked if "SUWA [Is] Going To Come Forward With Answers" because "Utahns Are Starting To Ask Some Very Tough Questions." This ad referenced the Cowboy Caucus’ request for information from SUWA about two of its trustees that have been convicted of federal security fraud.

Apparently the Cowboy Caucus is so threatened by SUWA and is so effete that like a kid in a candy store denied its favorite treat it had to throw itself down in a screaming, kicking fit in hopes its Mom, SUWA, would be so humiliated by its public display that it’d give in. While SUWA should answer and resolve any questions raised by its (hopefully former) trustees’ misdeeds, it should not cower to these spoiled Cowboy Caucus brats.

Almost all organization, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the United States of American and even the Utah Legislature often have had, have and will have, among its ruling members, persons that act less then judiciously. Yet if such organizations are founded upon sound principles, they can and will survive the misdeeds of the few. Hopefully, because SUWA’s goals and ideals are praiseworthy and of good report, it will not only survive but thrive to outlive the momentary shame caused by two of its trustee. Then the Cowboy Caucus’ attack ad will be viewed for what it is, a desperate tantrum thrown because of the power of SUWA’s principles as an entity.

In the meantime, "Utahns" would like to ask the Cowboy Caucus some very tough questions:
1. Did the Cowboy Caucus publish this expensive attack ad because of its heartfelt and sincere concern over SUWA’s well being?
2. Did the Cowboy Caucus use campaign funds or tax money to pay for the ad?
3. What is the Cowboy Caucus doing to ensure that organizations like SUWA flourish so they can ensure that the vital and pristine wilderness of Southern Utah is preserved for future generations?
4. Do any of the Cowboy Caucus’ members have business interests that are threatened by SUWA’s goals to preserve the wildernesses of Southern Utah?

I would sincerely beg the Cowboy Caucus to please answer these questions, so like them, I don’t have to throw a temper tantrum of my own to get their attention!

Loren M. Lambert
© March 24, 2008

Stinky Sneaker Mania

2008-03-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you that missed the local-section front-page article in the Deseret News last week, it appears that Utah’s own, the Tuck family of Tooele, are in the midst of creating a dynasty of stinky sneaker champions.

Now, call me simple-minded, but for the life of me, no matter how much down-right dogged, brain-sapping contemplation I do, I cannot fathom why any respectable Utah family would do this. So, for the love of all we hold dear in this life, would somebody please explain to me why, in the name of my grandmother’s left bunion, would rationale, evolved, in-the-image-of-god, sentient human beings aspire, not just to win, but blow the competition away in the Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest?

In the case of Utah’s own aspiring champion of putridity, Lane Tuck, is it the fainting buxom women who will fall at his feet? Or in the case of his sister, last year’s champion, Katherine Tuck, is it the bragging rights that come from excelling in the typically male dominated endeavor of producing crowd clearing foot stench? Is there a college scholarship to earn, or is it just the shear joy of culturing on ones feet ever more virulent and exotic forms of fungus all while relishing the bracing aroma that such horticulture engenders?

And while we’re at it, explain to me why someone would want to eat 57 hotdogs in five minutes, swill alcohol until their brains explode, or for that matter, watch an entire tour of PGA golf or a whole season of Bees baseball?

As to the Rotten Sneaker Contest, I suspect that it originally started when some fed up wife of a stinky footed oaf (probably an Odor Eater’s CEO) decided that instead of trying to get her beast to succumb to good hygiene, she would just encourage him to augment his stench in hopes he would rot himself to death from the feet up. Anyway, to assist further studies into curious types of human achievement, I recommend that Head and Shoulders sponsor a "Healthiest Head of Lice" contest, Mennen’s Deodorant sponsor a smelly armpit challenge and that the maker’s of Preparation H, sponsor a "Stinky--," anyway, you get the picture. And my last question is, any volunteers for judges?

Loren M. Lambert
© March 19, 2008

Intellectual Excellence vs. Experience

2008-03-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

If experience was an indispensable ingredient of human achievement, then we would never have witnessed the likes of Tiger Woods, Wolfgang Mozart, David Gates, American Idol star David Archuleta, Marie Curie and on and on and on. It simply is not. Experience is a neutral by-product of living through life’s mistakes and challenges--it can enlighten as well as burden--and for the less capable, it enhances their intellectual capacity as much as a full head of grey hair or a degenerating spine. For those endowed with superior intellectual excellence, foresight and the wisdom to surround themselves with men and woman of experience, it is less important.

Senator Hillary Clinton touts her experience as a tipping point. But what about the experience of the American electorate? For over 50 years it has voted into the Presidency several allegedly experienced men and their advisers. These grey beards have come no closer to solving the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, among other problems, than Hawaii has come to moving closer to the mainland. What does this teach us? While experience certainly has its virtues, experience without vision is as essential an attribute to a politician as is the experience of a blind bus driver begging to drive our children to school because of having experienced and learned from many a crash.

Senator Barak Obama has vision and has proven himself to be a man of superior foresight, brilliance and ingenuity. He also has the wisdom to absorb the experience of others by surrounding himself with men and woman of like mind and ability. On the other hand, Senator Clinton’s plea of experience is like that of the blind bus driver, heavy on experience but woefully short on vision. Moreover, Senator Clinton’s experience carries with it the burden of having become too much a part of the establishment. Because of this she will be unable to unshackle herself from the status quo and implement the new approaches that are needed at this dire time.

Senator Obama is the right choice. And to all fence sitters, be aware that white males, including this one, will vote for Obama. We will because we recognize his brilliance and could care less about his color or race. He is simply the best person to be president at this time in history. In short, his inspiring message of studied hope will carry us farther than the stale insipid message of clinging to experience.

Loren M. Lambert
March 10, 2007 ©

Who's Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Not US Attorney General Michael Mukasey

2008-02-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

Recently, the U.S. Senate invited the popular Fox program, "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader," to Washington D.C. to test both past and current cronies of the Bush Administration. Quickly, dispatching President Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfield and V.P. Cheney as all not quite smart as a fifth grader, they then set their sights on current US Attorney General Michael Mukasey. They were hopeful he'd pass since he had been so gracious during his confirmation hearings.

Before questiong him, they invited a whole classroom of fifth graders and their teacher from a local D.C. elementary and asked them this: If someone tied them down, put a bag over their heads and poured water over them to the point they felt like they were about to drown and die, would they consider it to be torture? All the kids said yes, but the teacher said no.

The teacher explained that if done to a Nun it was torture, but if properly authorized by a secret Bush goon squad and done to her ex-husband, who incidentally was Rush Limbaugh, it would be an act of extreme patriotism, especially if he was forced to admit he was a pill-popping idiot. This was applauded by the Democratic Senators who quickly instructed their Aids to write this down for future action. However, their more subdued Repulican counterparts prevailed upon them to label her as less intelligent than her students and to report her to the "NO-Child-Left-Behind" oversight committee.

They then zeroed in on Mukasey. When asked the same thing about water-boarding, he stated, "...It would be irresponsible for me, as an attorney general to provide an answer...If this were an easy question, I would not be relunctant to offer my views on this subject. But, with respect, I believe it is not an easy question. There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit the use of water-boarding. Other circumtances would present a far closer question." This statement invoked immediate jeers from the Senate Democrats and even caused Senator McCain and some of the legally trained Republicans to cringe with embarrassement. Only Senator Hatch sat beaming proudly and praising, "That's my boy, that's my boy."

Then, to the delight of all the Senators (except-no surprise-Hatch), one of the fifth graders raised his hand. He was then called upon and asked Mukasey how many years of law school and legal training it took him to get his head so tightly screwed up his butt and that if it wasn't, would it be considered torture if all the kids tackled him, striped him naked and forcibly shoved his head so far up his butt that he felt like he was going to drown?

Without batting an eye, Mukasey thoughtfully, pondered this question. Then after what seemed like enough time for President Bush to commit a new mispronounced word to his vocabulary, he chuckled and stated, "...It would be irresponsible for me, as an attorney general to provide an answer...If this were an easy question, I would not be reluctant to offer my views on this subject. But, with respect, I believe it is not an easy question. Nevertheless, as to the first question, unlike many lawyers who need years of schooling to get to this point, I was so well prepared for law school that I arrived with my head up my butt and have dutifully kept it up there all these years. That is how I got to be a Federal Judge. Moreover, while there are some circumstances were current law would appear clearly to prohibit me from having my head up my butt or for you to shove it there, there are other circumstances, such as being a member of the Bush Administration, that would present a far closer question. I might also add, it is the closest my facial cheeks will ever get to a real kiss or two, so don't begrudge an old man his pleasure. In fact you can all just come up here and kiss my a--"

It is reported that Mukasey then flipped everyone off, dropped his pants and mooned the entire Senate floor and all the terrified fifth graders--half of whom immediately confessed that they were terroists and could not stand any more of Mukasey's torture.

Loren Lambert
January 31, 2008

Fun with Tasers

2007-12-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

UHP Colonel Lance Davenport found that Trooper John Gardner’s tasering of Jared Massey was "lawful and reasonable under the circumstances." Indeed, as the UHP investigation of Trooper Gardner lamented, "officers are often forced to make split-second decisions or judgments in circumstances that are tense, uncertain or rapidly evolving."

As an example of this refrain, we need only look at the experiences of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Kent State. In all of these past events, while the citizens involved were not polly annas, they also were not significant enough risks to society’s well being to necessitate extraordinary measures. To the contrary, it was law enforcement that, upon finding its manhood questioned, created tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving crises which forced it to make split-second decisions and thereby justified its use of deadly force. In all of these cases, while its action may have been "lawful and reasonable under the circumstances," the "circumstances" were created by law enforcement and were as unjustifiable as were the deaths that arose out of them.

Similarly, while Trooper Gardner may very well have had an excuse to taser the hapless Jared Massey, it didn’t have to go that far. When Massey refused to sign the traffic ticket (as he had every right to do), Trooper Gardner should have walked away. But he couldn’t. His masculinity had been called into question. This is what Massey meant when he said that it was Trooper Gardner, "who [was] the professional . . [who] escalated [the] situation to where he had to use [the taser.]

Trooper Gardner escalated the situation by ordering Massey around, knowing Massy would either make his day by doing something stupid or learn a valuable lesson in diplomacy by being unnecessarily delayed in his journey. Either way, Trooper Gardner could go home to mom with a much bigger cod piece. As fate would have it, to the Trooper’s great glee, Massey supposedly groped his own codpiece. He thereby put Trooper Gardner in fear of his life, leaving him no option than to take Massey on "a ride with the teaser," –a much funner experience for the giftor as well as the gifftee than merely seeing each other in court.

So to end the uncertainty in such cases, the UHP should announce that during the holidays, all motorists will be given the option, on the spot, of either signing their tickets and paying a fine or getting a quick taser in the ass. That way, the citizen can then be put back in charge of the "circumstances" and the consequences of his or her choices.

Loren Lambert,
December 4, 2007 ©

BAD SENTENCE CONTEST

2007-11-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

From the stump a shaggy mushroom sprang spewing thousands of spores of which, he explained, perhaps two would germinate and that I had the same probability of ever wedding his daughter--thus compelling me to proclaim that I would indeed be the fungal bud upon the stump of his posterity.

Loren M. Lambert
October 16, 2007 ©

It was not the numbing vulgarity that I found to be most disturbing about my companion’s limited vocabulary, nor the unsettling emotions his obscenity conjured up within my soul, but the revelation spreading across his face that his feeble mind was so overburdened by the boredom of his own words that there was nothing left for it to do then to snap like a tensed-up piece of chalk on the verge of writing a thousand times, "I have a potty mouth."

Loren M. Lambert
October 16, 2007 ©

PHONE DIRECTORY HELL

2007-11-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

In many industries, such as taxi cab services, commercial river running and dentistry, unfettered competition is not allowed. This is done to prevent various types of chaos–cutthroat competition, overcrowding and indiscriminate teeth pulling. I propose one more area that cries out for some type of regulation-- the ever burgeoning and prolific industry of telephone directory services–hard copy and internet services. Perhaps the biggest–the Quest Dex–demands more than Uncle Sam does in federal taxes with the promise that if it doesn’t increase your wealth at least you’ll be entertained with the contortionist antics of its millionaire pitchman.

After selling your soul to Dex, you will have to decide which of the dozen other phone book companies to spend your pension and health insurance money on--the Regional Yellow Pages, the local Yellow Book, the Valley Wide Directory, the Dex Hispanic Section, the Hispanic Yellow Pages, the Local Union Directory, the City Directory, the Gay Yellow Pages and so on and so forth. What’s a business owner to do? Which book will the home owner keep and which name comes up most on the internet? And how many times have you either paid or almost paid a fake directory solicitation posing as a bill? I say please, for the love of Pete, let’s reach some kind of truce here in which either only a limited number of phone directories are given license to compile directories or lets all enter into a pact to only keep the directories that we buy advertising space in and join together to create a collective bargaining agreement to negotiate lower prices. Okay?

Loren M. Lambert
November 6, 2007 ©

THE NEW CEO OF WATER BOARD INC.–MICHAEL MUKASEY

2007-11-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, says he doesn’t know if water boarding is torture. Where on this planet does President Bush find these guys? What hole, rock, prison, escape hatch from hell did he scout out to find these jewels of intellectual duplicity?

I was pondering this question when I realized what a genius Mukasey is. Could it be that he, like many of Bush’s cronies, has or wants some connection to big business--like maybe starting up a company that manufactures equipment to use for water boarding? Or perhaps he has stock in the company that just came up with the new video game that gives people like him the thrills of torture? Or just maybe he’s being cute, like the US Supreme Court’s pronouncement on pornography--"I don’t know how to define pornography [torture], but I know it when I see [feel] it."

Someone should check on this. In the meantime, unless he actually supports Bush’s torture policy and doesn’t want to let on, his response indicates that he’s either been hiding out in a cave for his entire life or he has the IQ of a nematode and thought that, after wake boarding, water boarding would soon be that next big X-Game sport. Whatever the explanation, is this the guy we want providing leadership to ensure that the United States of America can repair the damage done from the sub-par leadership that gave us the endless stream of failures in Iraq?

No. He, like the company that just released the new torture video game that would be proud to have him as its huckster, should be boycotted, shunned, booed and rejected. Get someone that has the courage to stand up to the Bush team’s disdain for the law and disregard for human dignity, and who can stop dragging us into the Bush Presidency’s morass of twisted rationalization.

Loren M. Lambert
November 6, 2007 ©

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

2007-11-07T15:40:00.000-08:00

If due to fear we are too timid to confront a friend and ally with the awful truth of its past, then what hope have we ever of mustering the courage to confront others with the alarming truth of their present–the same truth that compels them forward to relive the failures committed by the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago?

Besides, wouldn’t we all be bigger if the Turkish parliament simply apologized for its past history, promulgate its own resolution declaring as genocide the United State’s treatment of the Native Americans, and then called it even?

Finally, to make it all feasible, I will apologize in advance for my ancestors and the American people.

Loren M. Lambert
October 16, 2007 ©

PAKISTAN'S LAWYERS FOR DEMOCRACY

2007-11-07T15:36:00.000-08:00

Thousands of Pakistani Lawyers, showing great courage in stepping out of the privileged lives they enjoy, have been beaten, jailed and most likely tortured, for opposing Pakistan Dictator, General Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of Marshal Law. These lawyers, who probably have great influence and widespread support throughout all levels of Pakistan, are bulwarks for democracy. They should be supported by any means available. They, instead of Musharraf, are best positioned to bring about real change and democracy to Pakistan.

Both Shakespeare and Mao Se Tung understood that, before obtaining complete control over a population, dictators first obliterate the legal system by killing the lawyers and judges. They are the proverbial canaries in the mine. After they go, so will everyone else that is a friend of democracy and of law and order.

General Musharraf only does enough to aid the US in its fight against Pakistan to placate the west and perpetuate his power. But don’t expect the Bush administration to really care about the lawyers. Like Musharraf, the Bush administration, masterful in pronouncing superficialities, will publicly, but mutely, condemn Musharraf while then continuing to aid his government and going on as if nothing has happened. In the long run, this will be a disaster and will cause the radicalization of Musharraf’s opposition, which, out of necessity, will also have to rebel against Musharraf’s most ardent supporter, the United States of the Bush Administration.

Loren M. Lambert
November 6, 2007 ©

GEORGIA BELIEVES A YOUTHFUL INDISCRETION MERITS 10 YEARS IN JAIL

2007-11-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

When I heard about Genarlow Wilson, who had his 10-year prison sentence overturned for having consensual oral sex when he was 17-years-old with a 15-year-old female, I was flabbergasted and astounded. First, because of the length, second, because it took two and a half years to overturn the sentence, and third, because I hadn’t heard about it before. When the sentence was first passed, it should have caused a firestorm. This case typifies almost every idiocy of the United States federal and state criminal justice systems. In our constant haste to show, by authoritarian force, how we are allegedly tough on crime, we weld our laws to impose our fanatical religious excesses and our bias ridden philosophies on the immature, impoverished and impaired. Often, it is not the blind matron of Liberty, with her equal scales of justice being held up to the multitudes, that best symbolizes our sense of fairness. Instead, it is the many-eyed, bloated black widow who is discriminately spewing out sticky webs to entrap and imprison all who are unfortunate enough to have blundered into her traps to be bundled up, stung, and stored away to have their life slowly sucked away.

Genarlow’s 10-year prison sentence is a stark example of Georgia’s, if not the Nation’s, religious and racial bigotry. Passing draconian laws to control the human race’s sexual proclivities because of our religious zealotry is like trying to control a fistful of slime by squeezing it more tightly in your hand. The harder you squeeze the more dismal will be your loss of control. While, as a society, we certainly need some boundaries to curb the dangerous sexual excesses of the few, we do not need to crucify the handful of the millions who engage in a youthful, or even adult indiscretion and are caught. The truth is there are perhaps hundreds if not thousands of thousands that have engaged in some sexual activities that would, when acknowledged publically, be deemed inappropriate by the "moral majority." This alleged "moral majority" needs to again learn the lesson that Jesus gave the world when he rescued the adulteress from stoning. I am confident that the same Jesus would stand at Genarlow’s side and many of the other alleged criminals crushed by our system of mandatory minimums and ridiculously long prison sentences. This punishment is meted out by those in authority who, if they were honest, are not without sin and, therefore, not worthy to cast such an unforgiving and unmerciful stone.

Some may think that Genarlow’s case is a single anomaly of things gone horribly wrong. It is not. It could never have happened without the combined effort of hundreds of religious extremists and secretly racist zealots in the Georgia State legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of government who have joined forces to promulgate, enforce, prosecute, and impose a law that would knowingly be selectively used against black Americans and other disfavored minorities and groups. Now, how can I make such a claim when the law is religiously and racially neutral? I can because, while the dictator of Iran may claim there are no homosexuals in Iran, and the elite in Georgia may claim there are no other 17-year-old men that have had consensual sex with 15-year-old women, every honest human being who has knowingly experienced this life with their eyes fully open and their ears fully engaged (no matter how "pure" their own lives) know this is just not the case. The only reason it may appear so is, because in Iran any homosexual who dares reveal his or her orientation is murdered; and in Georgia you can bet when some elite white law enforcement officer’s child is caught in the act, discretion is exercised by quietly looking the other way. Intuition would also indicate that, although it was not said, Georgians most likely passed such a law to wield against any black American who dared touch a white woman. In essence, if they couldn’t get away with lynching, then a mandatory 10-year sentence could maybe pass under the radar (which it apparently did).

The other issue brought to the front by the Genarlow case is the fallacy, in its current day application, that statutory rape and statutory sexual abuse laws can be wholly justified without serious question. These laws often impose unduly harsh sentences for engaging in sex with a minor even though there is not a great disparity in age of the participants and the female was honestly perceived for being of adult age. Also, most of these laws are imposed, either explicitly or by implementation, against only the male partner of the consensual sex. This is not appropriate.

The notion that consent when given by a minor child to engage in sex or that a mis-perception of the age of one’s partner in consensual sex should not drastically mitigate the consequences is unjustifiable. Moreover, the additional cultural sentiment that the minor female never bears responsibility for consensual sex sends the wrong message and is inequitable.

As an attorney, I have encountered many cases in which the female partner’s choices, actions, and own criminality, were equal too, if not more condemnable than her male partner. In such cases, should not society be as equally concerned about redirecting the female participant as well as the male? Additionally, there is a great difference in a male who knowingly pursues and entices an underage female into engaging in sexual relations than a male who honestly believes he is having sex with an adult who is fully capable of understanding the consequences of her choices. In short, instead of disintegrating into a revengeful society bent on metaphorical lynching and stoning, as Bill O’Reilly has said, we need a fair and balanced approach in our laws that attempt to manage human sexuality within reasonable boundaries without creating criminals of all who are unwilling or unable to adhere to our religious and moral views on human sexuality.

Loren M. Lambert
November 6, 2007 ©

Utah Mormons and Mitt on Polygamy

2007-09-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

During an interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, Mitt Romney indicated that he couldn’t "imagine anything more awful than polygamy." He also apologized for his great-grandfather who took on additional wives because he was ordered to do so. This is same sentiment that many Utah Mormons have expressed during the Jeffs trial.

Please spare me the political and self-righteous prattle. Maybe Mitt and Utah Mormons can’t think of something more awful (with the exception of losing the political support of the Christian right), but I can. I’ll start with Mormons who try to pretend that polygamy was just some strange aberration with no connection to early Mormon doctrine.

To the contrary, polygamy was a core tenant taught from every pulpit and expounded by the highest leaders as a practice needed for eternal salvation. While I don’t have a problem with fellow Mormons who personally believe that polygamy is an awful idea, I do have a problem with Mormons who disavow our forefathers and history in order to more conveniently comport with our modern sensibilities. This approach is hypocritical and repugnant.

If polygamy was needed for eternal salvation one hundred and fifty years ago, don’t brand as abhorrent those who believed it then nor those who believe this same "truth" today. There is nothing inherently wrong with polygamy, nor is there anything inherently right about monogamy– it’s just the most sensible ideal for our modern age– nothing more, nothing less.

Loren M. Lambert
March 1, 2007 ©
Revised Sept. 25, 2007 ©

Ex-Congressman Cannon Calls All to Multiply and Replenish the Earth

2007-08-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well now we know, thanks to Deseret News Editor Joseph A. Cannon, it is not the threat of nuclear war, global warming, middle east strife nor environmental degradation that threatens our planet, it is the "impending ‘empty cradle’" that most threatens our world. Moreover, we also know that those who choose not to have large families to drive around in their 15-Person Ford Assault-Vans are just plain selfish and most probably Godless and unfeeling. And if you think about it, Jesus Christ would fit into this category (apparently he was single and had no children). Now, I do not necessarily disagree with Ex-Congressman Cannon that it is indeed sometimes selfishness that causes people to choose to be childless, but it is also that same selfishness that causes people to gut steel mills and send jobs to cheaper labor markets, own huge homes, drive around in Hummers, and act as if there’s no one else in the world but them (or me, you, or Ex-Congressman Cannon).

Ex–Congressman Cannon’s editorials go on to champion those countries that have promulgated policies to encourage procreation while he castigates Malthus and his adherents who warned the world of overpopulation. Never does this proponent of exuberant procreation stop to analyze why declining populations present a crisis for westernized countries. It is this: Declining populations are a threat to consumer-based economies and are the bane of xenophobics who realize that in order to maintain their consumer-based, market-driven economies, foreign workers of different races, cultures, colors and religions must be immigrated into their economies to maintain their standards of living. You see, if populations decline, then there is less demand for food, clothing, and shelter and all of us that are depending upon our land values to remain high would see them plummet with the population. We are all part of a giant house-of-cards Ponzi scheme that is one deadly flu virus away from crashing down on our heads. That is what concerns the President Putins of the world.

Ex-Congressman Cannon concludes that this empty cradle dilemma was purposely foreseen by God who therefore gave the commandment to humankind to "multiply and replenish the Earth." His opinion, naturally and not surprisingly, comports with what many of the LDS faith believe as an unquestionable doctrine of the Mormon Church; that is, they are commanded to have large families. Therefore, at least in Utah, his editorial will ride high above the grinding truth mill of serious public discourse. However, the LDS Church has never established a doctrine regarding the number of children a couple should bring into the world. Moreover, as occurred with polygamy, what the individual, the couple, or the body of the church may be asked to do, when it comes to procreation, may very well depend upon individual circumstances and the collective exigencies of a particular era.

Once, when asked if Mormons were directed to have large families, a prominent LDS leader responded that Mormons, "plan to have children, and plan to take care of them." The problem is that Mormons, as well as with many of similar bent, very naturally remember the "multiply" part of God’s commandment and engage in it with exuberant, often mindless abandon but forget the equally relevant requirement to "replenish" and to plan to take care of their families. "To plan" does not mean to tumble into bed for a 10-year love binge and then when the fog of procreation lifts with the advent of six children under the age of 10, to get two jobs, go to night school, max out the credits cards and, if all this fails, go on welfare and take out bankruptcy. Nor is the Earth replenished, when during the pleasure-filled fog of procreation or birth-controlled sex you are able to provide your many progenies (or yourself) with a 500,000 square foot home, a houseboat on Lake Powell, and an SUV for each child’s graduation or for all you friends.

There is a balance and it is a balance that we humans either need to establish or it will be forced upon our heads. Nature in its natural God-given cycle goes through its replenishment process in cycles of population growths and population declines. Population declines occur when there are insufficient resources. Having the benefit of foresight, Humans should not be so arrogant that God will spare them from this natural law, and He therefore will not save us from our failure to replenish the Earth. Perhaps the "impending empty cradle" crisis is a solution to humanities’ inability to find this balance. It will force upon us a solution that doesn’t involve mass human extinctions, which will occur if all give heed to Congressman Cannon’s call to multiply.

To seek this balance, and avoid a Cannonisian tragedy, some people should not have children, some people should have fewer children, and some people who are responsible and plan to take care of their children should be allowed the privilege of having several children. However, no society should be allowed, with or without half a dozen kids a couple, to deplete, degrade, and destroy the Earth and thereby extinguish all of its many creatures. Similarly, no couple, including Ex-Congressman Cannon, should steep themselves in opulent luxury. We are all guilty of this in the United States, as it is the common denominator of the Godless and the God-fearing.

Despite Ex-Congressman Cannon’s inference to the contrary, I do not believe it was ever God’s plan that every square mile of Tierra Firma be a developer’s paradise with sterile theme parks and the few animals we deem worthy to live. To survive physically and spiritually, we need our wild places, our tundras, our teaming seas, our barrier reefs, our jungles, and unpolluted expanses.

I say, do not fear the Cannonisian prophecy of doom and an impending "empty cradle." Fear more a world populace that cannot find balance; that, instead of becoming an educationally driven society engaged in developing the depths of its love, knowledge, skills, abilities, and spirit, it is only interested in expanding its waistline, families, portfolios, houses, vehicles, and resorts. Yes, plan to have families and plan to take care of them, but more importantly give money and time to those who would fill and enlighten your minds and mold and develop your bodies, and not to those who would overfill your eyes or your bellies. This is the only path towards a sustainable, replenished and peaceful Earth and provides a place for both the childless, the "child wealthy," and all of our fellow creatures.

Loren M. Lambert
August 5, 2007 ©

Prosecution Means You Never Have to Say You're Sorry

2007-07-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

Prosecution Means You Never Have to Say You’re Sorry
and/or
Why Can’t Prosecutors, Governmental Attorney and
Law Enforcement Officers Say They’re Sorry?
and/or
Attorney General Foti and Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen
Joins Ranks of Those Who Think They’re God

A New Orleans grand jury exonerated Dr. Ann Pou and nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo, on allegations that they murdered four patients in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The grand jury felt that the allegations were not true.

But Foti, erstwhile Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff and the current Attorney General for the state of Louisiana, instead of thanking the grand jury for its civic duty and apologizing for ruining the lives Dr. Pou and nurses Landry and Budo, arrogantly stated, "I am very proud of our efforts on behalf of the victims and their families."

Also, Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen, upon hearing the news of the exoneration, herded her fellow prosecutors Michael Morales and Craig Famularo quickly from the court and quipped, "It's our position that it was homicide."

This reaction is typical of, I would dare say, every law enforcement officer, prosecutor, and government official who tears into a fellow citizen, then is proven wrong. Why can’t they ever just apologize? Why don’t they believe in the Constitution that states that we are innocent until proven guilty? Is there some innate, genetic flaw that disallows an ounce of humility in such public officials?

Admittedly, as an attorney, when I lose a case I usually think the judge or the jury was wrong. However, please don’t tell anyone, but in hindsight there are many cases that I wish I never would’ve taken because they were mistakes for all kinds of reasons, sometimes including my fallibility, and the fact that the other side was right. There, I’ve confessed. Please let me know if you have ever heard a prosecutor, government attorney, or law enforcement officer apologize for, in hindsight, making a mistake. If so, it would be an earth-shaking revelation. The saddest thing about this all is that not only are no apologies ever given, the victims of prosecutorial misconduct are rarely compensated for their devastating losses.

Loren M. Lambert
July 28, 2007©

Moral Relativism

2007-04-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

Unsettled by all the uncertainty looming on our national horizon with the Iraq war, global warming, the Supreme Court’s right wing verge, and finally Sean Hannity’s comeuppance at the hands of Mayor Anderson, I sought counsel from my old standby, the Thirteenth Apostle, Elder Secret Name. The same guy who has also been the lost Imam, the Fourth Wise Man, the Third Nephite and the Reclining Buddha.

He explained to me that, due to its moral relativism, western civilization is headed over the brink. I asked him if VP Dick Cheney’s use of extraordinary rendition to torture alleged terrorist suspects was an example of this. "No, no, no," Elder Secret Name counseled, "Republicans can do that, especially since they do it in Gods name and in a friendly legal forum."

"Oh, yeah, stupid me," I piped up, thinking I understood. "That’s why you, the Thirteenth Apostle, having spent time in one of those friendly legal forums when you were the Fourth Wise Man, were able to have three wives." He didn’t respond to this, but only smiled slyly.

Emboldened, I asked if I extraordinarily rendered myself into a friendly legal forum like Hilldale or Kuwait, could I pick up a couple of wives? He frowned and reminded me that I was practically a democrat, if not a libertarian, and therefore was not entitled to use extraordinary rendition for this privilege. He then suggested that I be patient, because in heaven even democrats were allowed as many republican wives as they wanted. "Why republican wives?" I asked. "Wasn’t that still against the law like miscegenation once was?"

"No," he chuckled, explaining that democrat women were unwilling, democrat men were scarce, and republican women were tired of all the prissy republican men. Besides, he said, Hilldale was being extraordinarily rendered by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

Yeah, what about that, I asked, what did he think of all the pomp and hypocrisy on the evils of polygamy by the descendants of the polygamists? Then he said, borrowing a phrase from VP Cheney, that it was a no-brainer. He explained that some things were not okay some of the time in some places but, as long as you were a God-fearing Republican, those same things were okay some of the time in other places."Oh," I said. "I get it. Things like drinking, speeding, abusing prescription drugs and cheating on your taxes?"

"No, no, no," he admonished, this time getting a little peeved. "Everyone, even Republicans, can share in the blessings of the principles of temperance and paying their taxes, especially if the taxes go to support a capitalistic war, and not a socialistic health care system." Hoping I’d finally gotten it, I asked him if to avoid moral relativism I just needed to become a good Republican. He then smiled serenely, blessed me and disappeared.

Loren Lambert© April 29, 2007

Cut and Run

2007-04-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

The Deseret News Sunday Editorial states that setting a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq is naive and dangerous. It further states that, "the best course is one that quickly helps Iraqis take responsibility for their own security." What is misunderstood by this position is that we have accomplished this mission. The Iraqis have taken responsibility for their own security. They have joined up, en masse, with militias and insurgencies that they think will best accomplish this goal. If we stay, we are going to continue to get horrendously mauled no matter how many troops we send in.

When I was about 10 years old, I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, facing a kid twice my size who wanted to pound my head into the ground. Usually my ego is bigger than my ability, but this time I had the wisdom to make the following calculations. First, I knew if I tried to fight, I was not likely to win. Second, I lacked both life insurance and divine heritage, so no one would benefit from my death. Finally, no one was going to be better off if I stayed. So, I must confess, I cut and ran.

The Bush administration says that failure is not an option in Iraq. Fine. But, with the exception of toppling Sadam, failure has been the norm in Iraq–from the massive looting, to the prisoner abuses, to the failure to bring stability. The perception most Iraqis still hold is that it is wrong for us to be there. Unfortunately, since perception is reality, we and our allies in Iraq need to come to grips with the fact that our immense national ego cannot overcome our inability to quell the anger, hate, mistrust and skepticism of the Iraqi people. We may have the guns, but the power of Iraq’s collective angst towers over us the like the school yard bully did over me when I was ten.

We must further realize that we are not the saviors of the Iraqi people, and the Iraqis are not going to be better off with our presence. While failure is not an option, victory as we define it is not probable and nothing is going to change that by unduly delaying our withdrawal. We need to leave the Iraqis to the fate of their own self-determination. It is dangerous to think that we can dictate any outcome by the force of our fire power. It’s time to leave, and the best way to do so, in fairness to our dwindling Iraqi allies, is to let them know ahead of time.

Loren Lambert
© April 29, 2007

Disappointment in VP Dick Cheney

2007-03-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Vice President Dick Cheney, in response to the Scooter Libby convictions, indicated that he was "disappointed with the jury’s decision." Does VP Dick Cheney know that the jury consisted of 12 members of "we the people?" Does he know that stating he’s "disappointed with the jury" is stating he’s disappointed with the American public? Does he understand that he, the second most senior official of the executive branch of the United States has, in essence, delivered the middle finger salute to all of us? Does he think we’re that naive? Maybe so, but I would urge the American public to stand up and say, "We are disappointed in Vice President Dick Cheney; we are disappointed in the lies, flippancy and arrogance of the Bush administration; we are disappointed that apparently good people have been placed in positions in which they feel the need to rat out CIA operatives, lie about it in criminal investigations, and then fall on their swords. Yes, we the people are disappointed, and that is why we the people were forced to render a verdict against a good man who made a bad decision while working for a bad employer."

Loren M. Lambert
© March 6, 2007

Ban Tryouts in Secondary Public School Sports

2007-03-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

Here, in the heart of pay-your-own-way, get-off-the-public-dole, be self-sustaining conservatism, why do I have to pay my tax dollars to help train your over-developed Billy or Betty to be a professional athlete? Okay, okay, okay, I admit that I am a bit piqued at some recent set backs in my own childrens’ athletic endeavors (let alone my own, years ago), however, I have always held this belief: allow all– yes, all– kids, so long as they have the desire and commitment to adhere to whatever rules are established for participation, to engage, without tryouts, in competitive team sports, up to the senior high school level.

Why? Because, while at the NFL level, Vince Lombardi was right on the money (emphasis on $) when he said that, "Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing," in our secondary schools, winning is not everything, nor is it the only thing. What is the only thing? Having the opportunity, regardless of one’s biological or environmental circumstances, to develop one’s full potential--not just intellectually, but physically, emotionally, socially and even spiritually. This goal, as perhaps many athletic greats would agree, can often be advanced through the rigors of competitive team sports.

Now, I realize that the idea of public school athletics being open to all without tryouts will cause many an old-school jock to rip out the last hairs from his balding head, pull several groin muscles, and put on sack cloth and ashes, but it shouldn’t. Tryouts do nothing more than create an unnecessary sense of entitlement, elitism, and exclusion among youthful athletes. Moreover, given that kids are a development in progress, tryouts are little more useful than if they were undertaken at the age of 9 months. Take the oft-quoted Michael Jordan story; he, the greatest basketball player ever, as a sophomore was cut from his high school basketball team. Many coaches will proclaim that Jordan’s story proves that if you have enough talent and persistence, no patently wrong coaching decision will hold you back.

This, however, is not the moral of the Michael Jordan story. It’s lesson is this--even though many think and act as if they are, and sometimes look the part, coaches are not God. Lacking God’s prescience, except when it comes to their own little Johnny or jumping Jane, coaches are ill-suited for divining the potential of our disparately developing kids, who need their instruction more than their judgment. Moreover, picking "winners," and a "winning team," should not even be their mission.

While Michael Jordan, due to his virtuosity and determination, was able to overcome the obstacle of a horrendously bad coaching decision, many who may lack his ability, but who nonetheless have the seeds of greatness, will not. Coaches are given enormous power; they can, and often do, become God-like figures over our children. By their choices, they can take two identically talented kids with similar potential, label one a loser, label the other their go-to-guy or gal, and thereby inevitably ensure that their prophetic labeling becomes a reality. The unfortunate result of such labeling is that it sometimes has no basis in fact, but is the product of bias, nepotism and sheer ignorance. Being better instructors than Gods, coaches should therefore not sit in judgment to pick "winners" and "losers," but should do what we are all paying them to do--to train and instruct all of our kids.

"No," they’ll say, "we can’t do it, there will be an overwhelming crush of scrawny, spastic, underdeveloped, belligerent, hygienically challenged kids diluting our limited capacity!"

First, in the eyes of another, the same might be said about a coach’s own bumptious progeny.

Second, if kids and their parents want an elite athletic experience, let them do as is done in Europe: pay for it in the private sector.

Third, like every other over-taxed teacher who does not have the luxury of cutting the worst English, history, or math students from their classes, you coaches will find a way.

Fourth, it is a myth, perpetuated by the egos of athletes and coaches, that everyone wants to be on the basketball or football team–they don’t–they just like the thought of it, like we all like the thought of getting up early every morning to run a mile or two and watch the sun rise.

Fifth, many wannabe athletes will sadly realize that playing game boy is more riveting than pounding out drills until puking up one’s breakfast of sugar puffs.

Sixth, more parental enthusiasm creates greater political concern about our schools, which in turn garners more mula for public schools, which in turn equates to more mula for coaches, which leads to bigger smiley faces on coaches.

And lastly, after five years of dedicated work, grades 7-11, without ever having faced the agony of a cut, and without ever having been anointed a "winner" by any coach, the Michael Jordans of the pack will have established themselves–some to the great surprise of all, including their fallible coaches. Under this system, the truly good and devoted coaches will find that they won’t have to pick the best, because, before they ever have to cut a single teary-eyed basketball wannabe, the best will materialize before them; whether as well-rounded, disciplined students who have learned the great benefits of team competition, or as great ball players headed to the NBA, WNBA or NFL .

This is as it should be, because winning in athletics in our secondary schools is so far from being "the only thing," that it, as the overarching goal, should be banned from schools as zealously as guns, alcohol, and drugs. We tax-paying parents commend our children into the care of our public schools believing, hoping, and praying that its devoted teachers and coaches will provide them with every opportunity to reach their full potential. While we may not necessarily expect our child to be the next Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, or Albert Einstein, we do expect these professionals, even though they are often under-paid and under-appreciated, to allow all of our children a place at their feet. And while it takes much greater courage, maturity, organization, and intelligence to coach, teach, and train the seemingly less able-bodied and less skilled and to stand up to the win-at-all-costs crowd than to take the path of least resistance and concentrate, and cater to, the supposed child stars and their fawning parents, we know they are up to the challenge (as well as resisting the urge to coach, whenever possible, their own kids).

Loren M. Lambert, March 1, 2007 ©

Workers Comp Predation

2007-01-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

Recently it was reported by the Deseret News that Sen. Mayne is sponsoring a bill to "safeguard settlements" by prohibiting cutthroat financing companies from the "predatory" practice of buying injured workers' disability settlements for lump sums at 30 cents on the dollar. As an example of this pernicious evil, Alan Hennebold of the Utah Labor Commission lamented that recently a disabled truck driver sold his future $200,000 Worker's Comp. settlement for a quick $40,000.

While this bill may be an eensy weensy spider step in the right direction, the question is, how has a market been created in which an injured worker is willing to sell her $200,000 settlement to a predatory financial company? Answer: it has been created by the predatory insurance companies who own the predatory financial companies who buy up legislators, lobbyists, industrial commissions and insurance defense attorneys. They, in turn, work to ensure that, as Hennebold intimated, while "wait[ing] for [her] claims to move through the legal process," the injured worker loses her home, hearth, and health.

Ask any honest broker familiar with the Utah Worker’s Comp. system and they’ll tell you it’s more cloyed up than a poodle on chocolate. The blame lies directly at the feet of our insurance companies, their legislators, and defense attorneys, who all benefit from the injured workers’ desperation. Currently, the Worker’s Comp. system is riddled with myriad systemic and substantive problems that allow the insurance companies to deny, delay, stall, and drag their collective sagging behinds. Why? Because, well, they can. The current laws are so flawed that they not only condone this delay, but encourage it.

Hence, when the worker is told by her doctor that she is terminally ill, or she immediately needs a $40,000 surgery to return to work, or when the mortgage company puts her house into foreclosure, what can she do? She certainly can’t wait for the Industrial Commission to void, nor for the Legislature’s next round of nose-picking progress. She does what she must. Out of a fit of desperation, she takes the $40,000 from the predatory financial company, owned by the predatory insurance company--who in turn takes half of the $160,000 windfall and buys up more legislators, lobbyists, and insurance defense attorneys to cloy up the system even more. Then, the next injured worker, who becomes even more desperate, will sell his $200,000 claim for 20 cents on the dollar.

So, to slim down the beast from a plus size 24 dress to a strapping 20, maybe leaving injured workers alone with their desperation is a step in the right direction. Maybe not. You decide. Just hope you don’t become a member of this maligned minority and need that $40,000 to avert death. If you do, in the near future your only choice may be to rest in peace knowing that, instead of a predatory financial company getting $160,000 of your never realized $200,000, because you died, a predatory insurance industry kept all $200,000 of it.

Loren Lambert
©January 23, 2007

Justice or Swift Judgment

2006-09-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

President Bush, in presenting his plan to try the inmates at Guantanamo pursuant to rules that would have made Herod, the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilot blush, explained that his goal was to give justice to those who gave no justice to others. This is in keeping with his lengthy history of sound bite blather that never bears any resemblance to the substance behind the spin. If it were otherwise, he would have admitted it was his goal to bring swift and predetermined judgment upon the heads of those that are accused of the same.

Tragically, in his haste to salvage his flagging support, he, along with many of us, have forgotten that the America we should love and idealize, is not the America of swift judgment, of retribution, of preemptive strikes or of the short term gain at the expense of the long term ideal. Nor is it the America that labels another human being a "non-combatant" so that decency can be dispensed with and torture inflicted. It is the America that, no matter how imperfectly we had lived up to its ideals, still strives to adhere to the creed that all mankind is created equal and possesses certain inalienable rights that are not lost because of the whims of an ever increasingly strident, isolated, and out of touch leader.

It is the preservation and perpetuation of this American ideal that should be foremost in our minds and that will, in the long run bring peace more assuredly than any swift trial, conviction and execution of the rabble confined at Guantanamo. Summarily try then kill this small handful of mortals and a thousand more will spring up in their place; rob them of their propaganda by taking the higher ground, and they will fade into oblivion.

Loren M. Lambert
Sept. 14, 2006 ©

It's All About Sex

2006-08-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

Whether you’re anti-porn, pro-porn, or just secretly pro-porn during weak moments and anti-porn in public or when penitent, we all should agree on one thing: sexuality, and its co-conspirator, nudity, are powerfully commanding forces that demand (and certainly get) our attention whether we like it or not. In fact, I daresay, that sex, next to greed, is the driving force behind terrorism. That’s right, not oil, not religion, not nationalism, but sex. Let’s face it, "sex is industry, it sells cars, it sells magazines," as the Switch Foot song goes, and whether we admit it or not, we "can’t get no satisfaction," because if we could, none of this would matter.
The reaction to sex, and it’s co-conspirator nudity, is a wonder to behold among us Homo sapiens. For example, when is the last time you held up the picture of a dog and then your dog start going into heat or humping? Nor do you see teenage female hippos get disgusted when they see the overweight buttocks of a fellow hippo protruding from the waters edge of the local swimming hole. The ability to cause disgust, anger, surprise, wonder, awe and arousal by depiction of the human form is both an amazing and powerful thing. Some would argue that its power should be completely suppressed, others that it should be let loose without limits. Neither approach is right.

Unfortunately, the data cannot prove that pornography causes certain sexual depravities. Consequently, the verdicts still out. What came first? The chicken or the egg? The desire and drive to feed the depravity with pornography or the pornography and then the depravity? On the other hand, if giving into sexual desire led to criminality, most of us would be criminals. All sexual beings have a drive to explore their sexuality. It is innate, it is inborn, you cannot cut it off without damage any more then you can lop off your own arm or gouge out your eye.

Although we are entitled to live our lives as chaste and nonsexual as we choose, we should not become puritanical, prudish, Victorian and self-righteous. King David and King Solomon were among the first pornographers. Although their explanations and focus regarding their many wives and concubines may have been different, their desire was no different than that of our modern-day Flints. Furthermore, I remain unconvinced that the choice of our modern-day Mormon leaders, including Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, to have many wives had nothing to do with sex. This is not to say that if those choices were influenced by sex, they were necessarily evil. When Mormons say that Brigham Young’s decision to have many wives had everything to do with complying with God’s wishes and nothing to do with sensual pleasure, they are deluding themselves and equating sexual pleasure with evil. Using an analogy that even right-wing, gun-toting ideologues will understand, sex is not evil anymore than guns are evil. It is equally wrong both to deny the reality of sexual desire as it is to proclaim that monogamy has and always will be the rule.

There is nothing wrong with the maximization of sexual pleasure, so long as it doesn’t involve force, coercion, minors, the need for welfare, undue risk, physical harm, and disequilibrium. On the other hand, as a society we should not begrudge the desire that many of us have to control when, where, and how we and our children will be sexually aroused and sexually involved. While we should respect the sexual expression of others, we should not have to experience a constant barrage of conduct which either directly or indirectly destroys all ability to choose the boundaries of our sexuality.

Saturation cheapens sex’s currency, gives free rein to those who are prone to overstimulation, and destroys freedom, while creating complete depravity for the weaker among us. Suppression, on the other hand, ignores the force that, when unduly bottled up, will erupt surging in unexpected and uncontrollable manners.

Just as we have learned to give freedom to speech, the practice of religion, and the pursuit of happiness, we need to find a way to provide both freedom and security for those who believe sex can be plowed under by cold showers, jumping jacks, hymn singing, and emotional and physical castrations, as well as those who believe that their sexual pleasure should include everything and anything up to ensuring that their fence posts and knotty pines have been introduced to their sexual prowess.

Loren M. Lambert
©August 2006

World Cup Soccer Sleeper--Ra, Ra, ZZZzz--sleepy time

2006-06-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

If basketball were as exciting as soccer, imagine the possibilities. The hoop could be fifty feet up. The court would be a mile long. A goal keeper flying on a broomstick could keep anything coming close from going in. And best of all–the replays on the jumbo tron!

"Lets see that again. Wow, look how Dirk goes in, launches the ball. Its going up, up, up and now down, down, down. Its coming close. Oh no, four inches of ball hits the rim and sends it off into hyper-space. What a fantastic attempt by the Dirkinator. Amazing. He’s an incredible shooter.

Here’s another angle, notice how Dirk is one jigometer off balance. Then the ball zeros in. A fly on that rim would think it was safe until the last split second, when the ball, zeroing in, crashes against the rim.

Lets show that again, only this time–that’s right, super, sloooooow mo-o-o! Now would be a good time to check on Grandma or do your Kidney dialysis. Otherwise, pay attention. Hone in on every excruciating detail of this fantastic effort by the Dirkmiester. Look at those muscles flex and bulge, watch his cheeks jiggle, then read his pulse on that carotid artery. Count the beads of sweat flying from his hair and onto the ball. There’s the release. This would be a good time to purchase your favorite beverage. Back? Good. Brace yourself. Here comes the impact. Notice the force this bullet shot exerts as it bashes the rim. Man, the reverberations are shaking through the entire backboard and into the stadium.

But that’s not all folks. We have a real treat for you today at the World Cup. Here’s what our infra red and gamma ray camera picked up. See that line? That’s Dirk’s gaze up to the basket. Oh, and yes, he does wear Hanes and have an "I love Mom," tattoo on his jumping muscle. Now, watch the ball as it nears the rim. See that florescent purple aura around the ball? That, my friends, is the life force, the spirit, or the will that only powerful athletes like Dirkster can give. Then, notice on the ball there’s a red palm print from the heat off Dirk’s almost perfect touch. Phenomenal. Look! The life force aura is separating from the ball. It goes through the hoop then merges back into the ball. That, sports fans, is the mark of a true champion. It shows that Dirk wanted it-- but it just wasn’t enough. . . Now back to the game"

Ra, Ra, Zzz--sleepy time.

If soccer was as boring as real basketball, you would shorten the field, enlarge the goal, cover the entire back area surrounding the goal with a taught ball-deflecting net that would immediately propel misses back into play. But this would ruin the game with action filled, lightning fast, multi-strategic and provocative high scoring goal making and thereby eliminate the reason we all go to soccer games–to ponder between goals how to eliminate scoring all together and to thereby have more time to check up on Grandma.

Loren M. Lambert
© June 15, 2006

Trash Team Treat Rosters

2006-05-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

I hadn’t seen as many overhanging, bulging bellies at a sporting event since our entire Lamaze class attended the Sumo wrestling world championships in Seattle. Yet there they were, punctuating the field in my twelve-year-old-son’s soccer game. The best player, when he wasn’t gasping for breath, red-faced and bent over (which was about 75% of the time), had a belly that would have caused any decent wage earning obstetrician to immediately induce labor. That is, if the boy had the excuse of pregnancy. But he didn’t. No. He had the excuse that has evolved to be the most important yet pernicious ritual of all little league sports--the team treat roster.

Watching him and several other chunkers bouncing up and down the field almost made me nostalgic for days when not only was there no team treat roster, there was strict water rationing--an invention of the Bataan death march survivors. And who knows, maybe introducing them to waist reducing Marlboros would be, in the long run, just as healthy.

Well, then again, perhaps watching the kids prematurely wearing out their knees sustaining their burgeoning girths is better than watching them die from cancer or pass out from heat stroke like a few did in my day, but do you see my point? The pendulum has swung a bit too far and is sagging, getting heavier daily, and may just snap before it can swing back.

I mean miss a few practices, no big deal. Blow off a couple of games, okay, we’ll let it pass. But forget to bring the treats on your assigned day, and you will be blindfolded before the goal box, and stripped naked with one hundred soccer balls drilled at your defenseless body. All of this with no line of teammates in a groin-protecting stance, providing a small wall of hope. Such public punishments would certainly make soccer more appealing to the masses.

What, then, is the result of our society gone mad with team treat rosters, Sunday school bribes, Dads and Donuts Day, bring a treat to work on Fridays and plug-the-school-budget-with-soda-sells? Hint, it ain’t Twiggy. So, for the love of Pete, as a first step back from the blubbery brink, let’s trash the team treat rosters.

Loren M. Lambert
© May 18, 2006

"Natives" Be Warned

2006-04-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

Ask any Native American what the fate is of a people that cannot control its borders. The answer is obvious--annihilation and marginalization. If a nation cannot control immigration into its borders, then immigration will control it--for better or for worse.

Forget the debates on what the depth, breadth and width of immigration should be. They are irrelevant until the borders are shut tight, by whatever means, to the undocumented masses. This is the overarching issue. It has nothing to do with legitimacy, race, color, culture, religion or country of origin. This is now our home. Expediency, not legitimacy, demands that we control first our borders and second the influx of those desiring the privilege of calling themselves Americans.

We can ignore the lesson we ruthlessly imposed upon the backs of our native brothers and have that same lesson visited upon our own heads, or we can choose our fate. To so choose should not include negotiating with the undocumented, the cordoning off of our laws into the infertile grounds of the reservation. This is not to say that illegal immigrants who would dictate their legitimacy are not worthy of this privilege. It is only to recognize that it will be mere handfuls that will bring us future 9/11's in manifestations even more destructive than the loss of life and property that was so dearly suffered in New York.

Let us therefore make prudence the better part of benevolence because the preservation of our culture and land may be the greatest gift we can offer the world.

Loren Lambert
© April 10, 2006

The Right To Be A Prude

2006-03-15T12:51:00.000-08:00

We the people, by indifference, neglect and indulgence, have allowed you, the media moguls, the mavens of marketing, the captains of industry, the stars of celluloid, to entertain us with violence, lewdness, vulgarity, and pettiness. All we, the beleaguered minority, ask in return is that you allow us the right to be prudes when we so choose.

Problem is, this right, unlike many other rights--like the right to be sober, the right to be drug-free, and the right to practice our religion--requires some degree of cooperation from you. Now, I humbly concede in my unrepentant prudishness that your agenda to fill my environment with unabashed, in-your-face, mammary and genitalia displays may be as natural as free running sewage, don’t force feed me with it. It is inexcusable that you, our executive, judiciary, and legislative branches of government and our captains of industry, cannot channel, confine, and package this virtual stream of porn so that it can be restricted to the proper time, place and setting of our choosing.

And while I appreciate the primal courage of all the naked hikers, streakers and performance artists and their need to educate all of us Victorian-steeped Pollyannas in our unhealthy prudishness, I must say sometimes I cannot distinguish you from all the flashers, pedophiles and rapists. Please respect my right to be a prude and let me and my family make a conscious choice to join your world without it being forced upon us. Therefore, when in my neighborhood, whether walking my streets, knocking at my door, or performing on my television screen or computer monitor, please come fully clothed, unless invited to do otherwise.

Loren M. Lambert
©March 15, 2006

Prosecutors Eat Green Jell-O

2006-03-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

Invariably, like green Jell-O on a paper plate, after telling some new acquaintance that I am a criminal defense attorney, she’ll ask, "Don’t you feel like a carp carcass washed up on a Great Salt Lake beach when you get some criminal off?" Well, no. Not exactly. But before I answer that, I have a better question. Next time you meet a prosecutor ask, "Don’t you feel like Liberty Park pond scum when you’ve convicted an innocent person or some guy spends thousands of dollars defending himself and is acquitted?" Or, if you meet an insurance defense counsel, ask, "Don’t you feel bad when, because of artifice, some hyper technicality in the insurance policy or by bullying tactics, you assist your company in dodging payment of a valid claim?" Or maybe you could call one of our legislators and ask, "Wouldn’t you feel bad if you passed a law that provided further privilege and protection to the few but powerful, yet harmed the weak and the many?"

You see I’ll admit that I have probably successfully defended "guilty" individuals but I’ve also, as have my fellow colleagues successfully defended many innocent people in cases that if my fellow defense counsel and I had played God and worried about feeling like a carp carcass washed up on the Great Salt Lake, there’d be dozens of innocent citizens sitting in the pokey.

And why would this occur, you ask? Because according to the prosecutors I’ve met, they are God, and they think that all the people who help land some defendant in the dock, from the highest Law Enforcement Officer down to the lowliest snitch, are infallible. So, would a prosecutor ever admit they convicted the wrong person or ever apologize to an acquitted defendant? No. Does it happen? Yes, more often than you think.

My second favorite comment from people is, "I hope you’re not one of those personal injury lawyers." Well I am one of "those personal injury lawyers."

If you asked all 10,000 plus attorneys, judges, legislators or office holders in the State of Utah what side of slavery, segregation, or Jim Crow they would have been on, all 10,000 plus would swear on the salt from the Great Salt Lake that they, long before the rest, would have denounced slavery and championed the rights of the disenfranchised. Who are they kidding? Who were the attorneys, judges, legislators or office holders that fought to maintain the rights of slave holders and to suppress the liberated slaves and their children? They were the same type of people who today, because of their privileged parentage, wealth or high intelligence, just like their slavery supporting predecessors, have chosen careers supporting certain entities solely because they could further enhance their fortune. Such persons can only thank providence and not their own good sense if the horse they have chosen to ride happens to be worthy of our respect.

More specifically, it is the prosecutor who never turned down a doubtful case or who never had any hint of guilt towards an acquitted defendant who deserves our disdain. It is the insurance or corporate counsel who has never seen anything but the virtue in profit at all costs and whose every thought and deed was because the corporation wanted it so who warrants our disrespect. It is the Judge who sees himself as an unfeeling cog beholden to only the most powerful who merits our concern. It is the legislator whose every decision is governed by not what is good for the whole, but what will endear her to the most powerful that should reap our mistrust.

Fortunately, slave supporters rarely rise from the ranks of the slaves, the downtrodden, or the underprivileged, nor from the ranks of the attorneys who represent them. For instance, unlike prosecutors, corporate counsels and insurance company attorneys, criminal defense attorneys hold no illusions about the sanctity of their class of clients. Consequently, again unlike prosecutors, corporate counsels and insurance company attorneys, criminal defense attorneys don’t mindlessly do whatever their client ask and can and do attempt to influence their clients for good. Also, no defense counsel or group of defense counsels doing their jobs, however large, has ever corrupted a judicial system or country. The same cannot be said about judges, prosecutors, corporate counsels and insurance company attorneys. So don’t fear the underdogs, fear their counterparts.

Now, before all you 10,000 plus Utah attorneys, judges, legislators or office holders get too indignant, I realize that whatever legal or legislative sins you might be guilty of are probably small in comparison to those of the supporters of slavery and that every thing you did was "legal" and expected of you. All I hope is that you at least ponder these questions: (1) With my same outlook, temperament and motivations, what side of slavery, segregation, or Jim Crow would have been on if I lived a hundred years or more ago, and (2) What are the issues that, like slavery, will a hundred years from now be so easy to see the right from the wrong and where do I stand on these issues?" If in so doing you have even the slightest inkling that you’re, metaphorically speaking, "a slave supporter," I challenge you to try to move your clients, decisions, constituents, family, self and colleagues to the right side of that issue. Then, and only then, will there be no doubt that had you lived a hundred years or more ago, you, before all the rest, would have denounced slavery and championed the rights of the disenfranchised.

Loren M. Lambert
March 1, 2006©

Dining with Nancy Workman

2006-02-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

Nancy Workman has been admitted into an elite and exclusive club that most of us will never have the privilege to join (God Forbid)--those acquitted of criminal charges. And among even this elite group she is in a subclass almost all to her own--those whose private attorney's fees are paid for at public expense--to the tune of $100,000. Despite the overblown tab--this is as it should be.

The rest of this elite club are divided into two groups. The acquitted poor who were appointed public defenders and the acquitted middle class who, to preserve their freedom and hopefully good name, must relish a bitter victory because of the financial ruin--which was the price of fighting the State. It should not be this way. No one should have to face the furry and power of the State when it brings its weight to bear in a misguided prosecution.

Despite popular belief, many such prosecutions are misguided. The completely innocent do find themselves facing the bar of judgment. These are the victims of lies, politics, mistakes, incompetence and over zealousness.

We have long decried the horrendous violence of a vigilante lynching mob/ but we should just as well bemoan the wrenching impoverishment of a financial lynching at the hands of an arrogant, ignorant or mistaken prosecution. A prosecution that amasses, not the raging mob that pulls you from your bed in full view of the cameras, but the quiet, unfeeling, unseen mob of government functionaries that pulls the house down around you. This is one of the last great injustices in our criminal system that should be remedied.

But it will not happen. No one cares about this elite minority, that is until that exclusive invitation is personally delivered to your door by one of our unformed servants. When it does, just hope you have all your dues saved up, or, no matter how innocent you know you are, you may not make it to dine with Nancy.

Loren M. Lambert, February 4, 2006 ©

The Militarization of Heaven

2005-04-12T14:49:00.000-07:00

Through the miracle of a joint Google, LDS Genealogical Society and Psychic Network venture, I, an active but long departed Jewish Rabbi, am able to weigh in on the recent LDS Jewish baptism-by-proxy controversy. Don’t try to claim it’s not happening. While it was difficult to get a volunteer, considering the need to marry a BYU coed, my living counterparts were able to persuade a MOSSAD agent to infiltrate your system. I mean, complain all you want about the occupation of the West Bank–in which middle eastern and world tensions are heightened, finite Palestinian territory is coopted, and blood is spilled–it still pales in comparison to the distress the occupation of our middle eastern Jewish souls is causing here in western Kolob. Now I realize that the urge to conduct a posthumous baptism is a bit more charitable than a mortal cremation, but try to see things from our perspective.

Here is a rundown of the havoc this practice is reaping here in heaven. First, several weeks ago, sister Rubinstein, who, upon her death, was quite relieved to find she no longer had to coexist with her obnoxious husband, returned home to find her grinning husband sitting in the kitchen explaining that they had just been sealed to each other for time and all eternity. We have heard nothing but nagging since then. But those nags are nothing compared to the scream she let rip when she discovered that what is "sealed on earth is sealed in heaven and what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven." I informed her that this meant she could only be divorced on earth and that no one down there, including you Mormons, does divorces by proxy. Perhaps that’s another area of billable hours for your ambitious Mormon lawyers.

Also, Rabbi Goldstein was leading the Sabbath services when BAM!–with no warning, he was suddenly drenched in water and declared that he had just been baptized a Mormon. He then started this gibberish that it wasn’t too late to get in our food storage. When this happened, my Jewish congregation indicated its displeasure to your apparent discriminatory practices. You see, Jewish women have been disappearing from our ranks at an alarming rate due to your proxy baptisms. Also very few, if any, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus seem to fall victim to your baptismal zeal. To top it off, we have noticed that Brigham Young, who lives just down the street from me, with his 54 wives, has been paying a little too much attention to our Jewish daughters and several of the recently baptized women have taken up residence at his "beehive house." (He, by the way, lives right next door to two Muslim martyrs, each of whom believes they have 70 virgins apiece- no one has been brave enough to inform them that celestial demographics don’t quite allow such an exponential male-female ratio and that supernal seamstresses can do wonders with a veil [which the men are threatened not to remove on threat of being sent back to their earthly paradise]).

The last straw was when Tevye was in the middle of chastising his daughter, Sydle, who had taken to wearing a CTR ring, when he also was baptized a Mormon. His family bombarded him with rounds of "Tradition, Tradition," for months. It drove the poor man mad until he finally wandered down to Brigham Young’s place. From then on, it was, "If I Were a Rich Man," day in and day out. When, to his great chagrin, Golda was baptized and it was all "Sunrise, Sunset." Oi Vay.

Now, in conjunction with our living Jewish counterparts, we have discussed how to put an end to all of this nonsense. First we thought of giving circumcisions by proxy to the Mormon men here but couldn’t find any living Jewish volunteers to perform this service. We are currently suggesting that all of the different religions adopt your practice and declare an all-out conversion and baptism war in heaven. However, it will take awhile for us to get everyone on board and get funding from the US Congress, and since you Americans believe in a fair fight, could you please agree on a cease-fire, kinda like the one we now have in the Middle East, until things are more equal? Ya think?

Loren M. Lambert
© April 12, 2005

The Real Lesson of the Vietnam War

2004-09-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

Who am I? From age 17 to 21, if drafted, I would have gone, from age 22 to 24, I would have fled to Canada or elsewhere, from age 25 to 27 I would have gone to prison, from age 28 to 34 I would have opposed the war but volunteered to serve, as I actually did. Who am I? I am an American. A thinking, reasoning, nerve-packed being that cherishes life, all life. The same as you. The same as our Presidential Candidates.

So why do we beat each other up over our choices in response to the Vietnam War or question the valor of those who played any role in it? Is it universally understood when war is justified? God humble those that find it easy and God help us when it is so. Yes, there is a time to kill or be killed but fear is difficult to bridle with half-truths, half measures and shifting convictions. And death should not be unleashed in ill-defined endeavors.

For this reason, I say anyone that fought in it, whether for a day or a decade, whether their tale has grown as long as the Vietnam Memorial is heart wrenching, should be saluted for their sacrifice. Anyone who protested it or went to prison resisting it, should be praised for their passion. And anyone who escaped it whether to Canada, to Cambridge, or to a safe spot in the National Guard, should be pardoned for their choice. And all who lost loved ones to it should be born upon our shoulders.

That is the real lesson of the Vietnam War. And here we are again facing war--this sifter of men, this phantom for our fear. Who will be cowards and who heroes? Who will bear our red badges of courage? Only those that would choose as you would choose? Or will our maturity embrace all, like all those that should have been embraced in questionable wars long past?

Loren M. Lambert, © September 22, 2004

Live by the Assault Weapon, Die by the Assault Weapon

2004-09-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Who is more likely to storm my business or my child’s elementary school to pop off lethal shots of lead---my wacky neighbor, the local drug dealer or some segment of the government my wacky neighbor claims he must arm himself against? Answer: my wacky neighbor. And what makes it more likely that my wacky neighbor and other potentially off balance souls, including the local drug dealer, will actually get their twitching fingers on assault weapons? Answer: the Bush administration. While you may permit Uncle Bob or Senator Kerry his hunting gun, we don’t need a Nation awash in assault weapons. Please strengthen the assault weapons ban by voting appropriately.

Loren M. Lambert, © September 13, 2004

God's Vote

2004-09-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

My cousin and I are both long-time conservatives. We get together once in a while to discuss politics. Our discussions are pithy and to the point. He starts and ends it by stating: "I'm voting for President Bush because that's who I think the Prophet would vote for."
Gee, I ponder, aside from the fact that the prophet is as likely to open up a gambling hall in the Holy of Holies as he is to reveal this, how do you argue with such sound reasoning? Well, here it is, cousin.

D&C 101:77 states that, "the laws and constitution of the people, which [God has] suffered to be established, . . . should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh." That's right, cuz- all flesh, as in everyone on the face of the earth, not just you and me.

The current President and his administration do not believe this edict of God. They argued before the Supreme Court [and thankfully lost] that the constitution is not maintained, nor does it protect all flesh--only US citizens it declares worthy--everyone else can rot as long as the executive branch deems it necessary for national security. This notion and the message it sends has resulted in many horrendous errors in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

Therefore, dear cousin, while you may think you have a pretty important person directing your vote, I, after diligent and thoughtful study, believe I've got God directing mine.

Loren M. Lambert
© September 8, 2004

Ich bin ein Feloner

2004-09-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

I recently heard that among the problems that Floridians are determined to fix with their new voting system, besides anchoring it in hurricane force winds, is preventing felons from voting. Apparently this is a big problem. Studies show that while only 30% of the general population regularly votes, if they could vote, 90% of the felons would--not! Floridians suspect that many felons voted in the last presidential election. Does that mean they voted for Bush? Hmmm. I would think they voted democratic. But who knows--maybe they cast all forty two of their illegal votes for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, felons are easy targets. There's not many politicians nor pundits stepping forward to champion their right to vote. And why should they? Who among us would sign a petition to allow such a right? But maybe we should. Think about it. If felons were allowed to vote, who would they vote for and how does one curry to the "felon voting block." "Vote for me because I'm the felon's friend," or "Vote blah-blah-blah because we're the party that's soft on crime." Wouldn't this at least let us know were the candidate or party stood on crime and punishment matters? And why shouldn't felons be allowed to vote based on this issue. Who is more knowledgeable about it?

But really, if felons could vote and the "felon vote" mattered, what would it say about our society? Look at any society gone wrong and you will find that the innocent have been "felonized" to prevent them from voting. Maybe we are doing that. Picture felons as the proverbial canary in the mine. If the vote of a felon can upset the political balance of a nation as great as ours it will mean that we too have felonized the innocent and sold our souls to the felons sitting in high offices. So, I say we should fear more the society that disenfranchises its felons than the felons who vote. Therefore, borrowing a phrase from Johh F. Kennedy, I say Ich bin ein Feloner and urge you all to fear more the indifference of the majority before you spend millions turning out the felon from the voting booth.

Loren M. Lambert, © September 7, 2004

Goats And Universal Human Rights

2004-05-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

The label "Unlawful Combatant" or any other label does not turn a human being into a goat. But that is what Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the Bush Administration believe. If you are not granted basic universal human rights, no matter your national origin, race, religion, etc. and no matter the circumstances of your apprehension and containment, you may as well be a goat.

As a goat, the US Government and US military are free to dress you up in the latest fashion in hooded prison garb, take you on an endless Caribbean vacation, milk you dry, strip you naked, parade you around, inspect your genitalia, and maybe even have a goat roast. And who would ever know? Without the right to due process, the right to an attorney, and the right to have Red Cross visits, you may as well be a nameless, cloned goat--even if you were an innocent Quaker goat caught up in the fog of warring goat herdsmen.

If the despicable excuses for US soldiers had been aware that the human beings they were torturing in Iraq were, at the very least, being regularly visited by their attorneys and the Redcross, their criminal tendencies may have been curbed. More incidents like this will come unless that Bush Administration reverses its myopic view on human rights. This is true because as human beings and not goats, no matter our religion, color or country, without checks on our power, our self righteous arrogance will not prevent us from being corrupted and becoming tyrannical goat herdsmen in charge of what we'll view as goats--only fit for slaughter.

Hence, the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners is not just a failure of these sorry, disgusting soldiers, it is a failure of leadership all the way up to the top. We have lost the moral high ground. We will not recover. I fear this incident will lead to more deaths than any other incident in this war. It is time for our leadership to leave. It is time to for us to leave.

Loren M. Lambert © May 7, 2004

Hammering Heads

2004-03-15T09:34:00.000-08:00

Dallin Oaks, former state Supreme Court Justice, once warned a group of new attorneys that until they became grey with worry and oblivious to influence they would tend to wield their Bar memberships like toddlers given a hammer and told to go forth and pound nails. Along with many other professionals, that's what we’re doing to Melissa Ann Rowland, we're pounding nails with the skill and temperance of five year olds.

Every doctor, lawyer, police officer and social worker has seen them. The "Ms. Rowlands" who can't responsibly manage the tangles in their own hair let alone another human being. And we've all said it–this person should not be allowed to have children–but not out loud. It's violent, morally tyrannical and an anathema to even suggest that we should control the reproductive potential (not sexual freedom) of our citizens. So what do we do?

We wring our hands and facilitate in a pre-conception pre-partum stupor. Emasculated by our sense of misguided morality, we brush off, we coddle, we cite, we medicate, we feebly recommend, and then we send off the "Ms. Rowlands" of the world to some other jurisdiction or medical facility hoping that others will bear the burden and incur the expense of early intervention. But it never happens and we end up with dead, discarded, and neglected babies. Only then do we jump into action. When the consequences are irreversible, we whip out our hammers and in full hammering fury file murder and neglect charges, shuttle live but often battered children into foster care, and vilify all who had contact with the putative mother including the society-made dollar-conscious health care providers.

In the end, isn't this a more repugnant, violent act? Isn't it more vile to sit mindlessly before the birth canal waiting to select the appropriate hammer based upon the outcome? We should not. It is likely that Ms. Rowland did not have the mental acuity to understand the implications of her pregnancy nor to understand the implications or necessity of the recommended C-section. She is not a murderer in the classic sense that she ever formed the criminal intent to kill; she is the embodiment of our inability to make hard decisions early instead of later on when death, abuse and neglect raise their menacing heads ever in need of pounding. We need to put away our hammers, take a deep breath and make the difficult decisions, not in the birthing room, but before conception dictates the inevitable.

Loren M. Lambert March 15, 2004

Philadelphia Eagles’ Meeting Transcript Proves Rush Linbaugh is Not a Racist or a Big Fat Idiot

2003-10-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

Scott Cohen: "The offense stats have declined. Revenues are down. We need to bring in [inaudible]."

Joe Banner: "Well, we have about 5 million left for player acquisition. [inaudible] If we make the playoffs we'll net over 15 million."

Jeffrey Lurie: "I don’t want the most talented, damn it. I want diversity. I want underachievers. [Pacing noise] I want the interbred. I want the downtrodden. People like you [pause] and me!" [throat clearing]

Andy Reid: "People like you, Jeff? [Farting sound] Weren’t you a pasty uncoordinated nerd?"

Jeffrey Lurie: "Only because I wasn’t given a [bleeping] chance, damn it. [Loud bang, breaking glass] That’s what I want to do, give others a [bleeping] chance. Create opportunities. [Bleep, bleep] it. Give hope."

Andy Reid: "I can’t win games with hope, Jeff."

Jeffrey Lurie: "[Bleep] it. Who’s talking about winning. America was built on hope. I’m building America, Andy, you [bleeping] son of a [bleep]."

Joe Banner: "What about the board?" [Burp]

Jeffrey Lurie: "[Bleep] the board. I went from janitor to millionaire because I was given a chance. What’s your last choice for quarterback?"

[Inaudible, retching, logie hurling noises.]

Jeffrey Lurie: "Yeah, McNabb’s perfect. Call his [bleep bleep] up. Forget the rest. Jim, you can keep your defense but I want a complete overhaul of the offense and special teams. Scott, Brad, I don’t care where you have to go but I want female kickers, native American running-backs, pasty nerd janitor receivers, pigmies for our special teams, Asian centers, ex-con half-backs, Gulf-War-Vet guards, Afghani full-backs, and handicapped linemen."

Andy Reid: "Are you out of you [bleeping] mind. I mean [inaudible]. What the [inaudible]. You’re [inaudible, laughter]."

Jeffrey Lurie: "No, Andy. I'm a visionary--just like Leo. Get with the program or be replaced by the ‘water boy.’ You wait, this giving-a-chance-thing will be league wide in two years."

Joe Banner: "Well I guess we’ll save money on salaries."

Jeffrey Lurie: "Absolutely not. Let’s not be selfish. Max us out."

Brad Childres: "Holy [bleep] you can’t be serious." [Snorting, noise].

Jeffrey Lurie: "Damn right I am. Get to work. [Butt slapping] Oh, and one more thing. We need a player that can give aging, white, bloated wind-bags hope. [Pause] Hmmm. Got it. Joe, see if Rush Linbaugh’s interested in being our backup quarterback or maybe he could augment the cheerleading squad."

Loren M. Lambert
© October 4, 2003

Confessions of a Torturer

2003-09-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

I should be silent. I should fear the approbation I will pull down upon my head by my confession. But silence is no longer an option. Silence only emboldens the despots that fund, encourage and order torture as a state policy. Though I must accept responsibility for my own choice to bow to their authority, until we reform the institutions of torture, though I and others may leave the torturers’ ranks, the evil will continue. They taught me deception to capture my prey and to then inflict confinement, isolation, sustenance deprivation, chemical poisoning and finally impalement. How did they corrupt my heart, ensuring years of service and blind acquiescence to their orders? They employed the mother of all extortions: my children.

Every fall it starts. While settling in for four months of football, one of them will appear in the rec room, hovering over my Laz-Z-Boy, demanding help to locate, capture, kill then display numerous six-legged creatures as an offering to their teacher. Goaded on by the fear they will fail grade school and never leave home, I rise from my throne barking out orders. Get the net! Man the jars! Retrieve the cotton balls! Bring the alcohol! When all is fetched, we’re off to the swamp park.

Soon we’re catching bugs. I’m about to toss an alcohol-soaked-cotton ball in the first bug jar when one bug turns her brown, moist eyes on me. Another deftly rolls on his back and gently waves his little multi-jointed, exoskeletal legs and antennae imitating our cuddly Pit Bull, Rascal. While another, flying up and down in the jar, motions to me, simpering, "Please. I have children." That’s it. I can’t do it. I can’t kill such resourceful creatures. Then the vision of kids who never leave home again pops into my mind.

Maybe, I suggest, my son can turn in live specimens. So, with Noah as our inspiration, we try packing them all live into our two jars. Surely if two of every animal on earth can coexist on a cramped Ark for 40 days, we can get 12 different bugs into our jars. But I’m wrong. The bugs don’t cooperate. As a new one’s placed in, another escapes. A frisky Praying Mantis starts taste testing his cell mates. We have no choice--some of the bugs must die so others may live. But which? I decide to discriminate: biting, common and ugly bugs get the death penalty; cute, colorful, fascinating bugs get life-behind bars with the possibility of parole. Explaining this to my nine-year-old son, he pulls himself up to his full 48 inches. Tenting his hands before him and boring into me with his eyes he states, "Many who live deserve death, and many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so eager to deal out death and judgment."

Hmmm. The words sear my soul like Sting biting into Shelob’s bloated abdomen. So I count to ten. While sparing the ladybugs, butterflies and praying mantis, I cotton-ball the flies, mosquitoes, wasps and beetles. Instantly they begin to twitch, then slowly die. I feel terrible. Hence this confession and epiphany: why not combine science and art? Let the kids catch them, photograph or draw them, and then set Willie free. Is this too much to ask? No, I plead, please, for the love of Albert Schweitzer, don’t make me torture again next fall--in bug collecting merge the disciplines of art and science!

Loren M. Lambert September 13, 2003