Pages tagged "Law"

In September 2010, I received a letter from the IRS, which said that I had to pay a “frivolous filing penalty” of $5000 for my action of withholding some of the money I owed for my 2009 taxes. “We have determined that the purported tax return you sent is frivolous and your position has no basis in law.”  Frivolous. The word stuck in my mind.  Part of this journey is about words, about patience, about truth.  It gave me a sort of mantra that is precious to me now, “I didn't ask for this, it is not about me, and way will open."

When I graduated from law school and began working as an attorney, I thought I had “arrived,” that my career would unfold seamlessly, and that I would achieve, through competition and striving, excellent results for my clients. Success was going to happen just at it had in high school and college – work hard, don’t get distracted, follow the rules, and things just naturally fall into place.

Public Secrets and Justice: A Journal of a Circuit Court Judge

The terrible sufferings of our forefathers in the prisons of the seventeenth century have given us as a people a special interest in the management of prisons and the treatment of crime. . . [There is] much work still to be done, in creating a right understanding of the nature and causes of crime, and in emphasizing the need for redemptive treatment rather than retributive punishment.

The Art of Small Resurrections: Surviving the Texas Death Chamber by Walter Long

“The children’s meeting” of 1663 is famous among Friends. In 1906, some Friends made a book about it, told in the words of fourteen-year-old Judith, who was there in 1663. Near the start of the book, Judith says:

Dear Editor: I read the July/August issue of Western Friend, “On Difference,” with great interest, especially the pieces concerning the history of Native peoples in the U.S. I would like to recommend to your readers a video of apresentation given by Steve Newcomb of the Indigenous Law Institute in Arizona, In it, he explains very powerfully and clearly “The Doctrine of Discovery,” which was declared by the Popes in the 15th and 16th centuries to legitimize the domination of non-Christian people.

Dear Friends: During WW II, on February 14, 1945, I walked with my childhood friend from our school in Prague and he invited me to go to his house to play. For some reason, I decided rather to go home. When I came to the door of our apartment, suddenly an explosion occurred on the street I had been walking on just one or two minutes earlier. Had I been slightly delayed, an air bomb would have killed me. The following day I learned that another bomb had killed my friend on his way home. That day I escaped death twice.

An interview with Lora Lempert