Kent Wills I'm not holding out an abundance of hope. But then again, when I go away, Ted goes away.... :) That's what has me totally baffled here. If they had the smoking gun, you'd at least expect them to put a little pressure on Hum. There is no question that he is *technically* qualified -- and, truth be told, I prefer it when judges actually follow the law, as opposed to only following it when it takes them where they want to go. But is he morally and ethically qualified? The Vanguard case proves, unfortunately, that he is not. It ought to be automatic. The legal threshold is the appearance of impropriety. When I worked for the Big-Eight accounting firms, it was Rule One: If you owned even *one* share of stock in a company the Firm audited, it was a firing offense. It didn't matter if you worked in Anchorage, and the client was based in Miami. Zero tolerance. The fact that Judge Alito held ~$500K of stock in Vanguard funds is a clear breach of ethics. Agreed. I don't have a problem with flag-burning, as it is no more or less problematic than any other form of peaceful protest. As President Kennedy succinctly put it, if you make peaceful protest impossible, you make violent protest inevitable.
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