SFL Friday -- The Weather in My Head!

They may fix
The weather in the world
Just like Mr. Gore said
But tell me what's to be done
Lord - 'bout the weather in my head

Well it's that time of the week, let's see what is rattling around in the ole' noggin:

1.  The Rule of Law -- it's a bi$%h:

Tsarnaev is facing the death penalty. That is the circumstance in which procedural fairness matters the most. Yes, we have to protect ourselves from terrorism. But not by breaking with our traditional respect for the rule of law.

Or is that view old-fashioned?

2.   Florida's anti-Sharia foreign law bill is almost a parody of a bad law:

With the bill defeated in prior legislative sessions, its sponsors recharacterized it presumably to blunt criticism by attempting to distance it from the original language that overtly targeted sharia, which to Muslims is what Halakha is to Jews and canon is to Catholics The current version makes no such direct reference and instead targets "foreign law." The corresponding staff analysis warns legislators it may be fundamentally flawed nonetheless.

At the most rudimentary level, our law is derived largely from English common law. If SB 58 were to become law in Florida, the resulting confusion would likely precipitate a flood of litigation, Florida lawyers being the principal beneficiaries.

For instance, "this could prohibit Florida courts from recognizing divorces of Jews under Israeli law," advised David Barkey, with the Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913 "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people."

Barkey; Carlos Osorio, with the International Law Section of The Florida Bar; and Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, also observed in a column they co-authored for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that the bill "threatens to derail Florida's role as an international trade hub by complicating and destabilizing the personal and commercial lives of foreign nationals sent here from such important partners as Israel, Latin America and elsewhere."
The potential impact upon trade and economic development should not be underestimated.

 3.   I happened to be re-reading Jack London's autobiography and his love/hate relationship with alcohol, John Barleycorn, and came across this wonderful 1913(!) account of trying to explain to someone what it's like to smoke hashish:

Take Hasheesh Land, for instance, the land of enormous extensions of time and space. In past years I have made two memorable journeys into that far land. My adventures there are seared in sharpest detail on my brain. Yet I have tried vainly, with endless words, to describe any tiny particular phase to persons who have not travelled there.  “I use all the hyperbole of metaphor, and tell what centuries of time and profounds of unthinkable agony and horror can obtain in each interval of all the intervals between the notes of a quick jig played quickly on the piano. I talk for an hour, elaborating that one phase of Hasheesh Land, and at the end I have told them nothing. And when I cannot tell them this one thing of all the vastness of terrible and wonderful things.”

I "grok" you, dude.

4.  Congrats to Judge Tanya Brinkley, investiture today!

Have a great weekend!

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/25/3364667/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-and-the-rule.html#storylink=cpy