General Goings On

Sailing Ship - Caspar David Friedrich

Today the law firm of Caskey & Imgrund did our first purchase real estate closing for a client. One of our areas of practice involves helping people negotiate and close on real estate deals, so in less than two weeks, we've gotten our first one done! The new firm is going great, and I'm so glad to be working with Alex Imgrund. He's a wonderful friend and a great lawyer who keeps me smiling all the time, even when we're doing the less than fun work of running a business. He might also be one of the few people in the world who quotes movies as much as I do.

In other news, I'm getting more involved in Scouting now that our son is going to be a Tiger Cub soon. I've signed up to be the Assistant Den Leader for the Tiger Den for Pack 100, and I'm really looking forward to it. I got my Eagle Scout rank back when I did Boy Scouts, so I'm excited about passing on that knowledge and sharing the scouting experience with our son.

My tee ball coaching is also going well - the players are having fun and we're learning some fundamentals. They're starting to do some things that resemble baseball...occasionally. Like a good friend of mine used to say: "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." 

In my reading, it's slowed down a bit due to everything above taking up time, but I've made it through The Letter of Marque in the Aubrey-Maturin series. Possibly my favorite one, but I feel that way after every book of his.

Hope everyone out there is doing well.

Happy Wednesday

Slowly starting to get things back to normal around here. I've done most of all the administrative things that come with starting up a law firm, so I'm starting to actually sleep again (a few hours here and there, anyway).

A few legal links:

1. South Carolina Circuit Court rules that the student apartments around town are eligible for tax breaks.

2. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ignores Heller and fashions own test.

Long Absence Explained

Sorry for the long absence from posting. I've been really busy starting my own law firm, coaching tee ball, and generally living life with my wonderful family. Sorry for the lack of posts.

To apologize, here's a picture of a dog relaxing.

Flynn out as NSA

Mike Flynn is out as national security adviser.

Eh, probably not a bad thing. Not sure Patreus is the right fit for the job, either. Can't anyone here play this game?

Tee Ball Coaching

It's been a busy time for me, as I am now the coach of our son's tee ball team. Our first practice was yesterday afternoon, which was nice as the temperature on February 12 was in the neighborhood of 78 degrees. Prime baseball weather.

Here's hoping everyone has a productive Monday. Keep your eye on the ball.

How to Fix the Education System

To make it two British related posts in a row, I thought I'd share this short clip of how the British Prime Minister decided to fix the educational system.

It's so crazy, it just might work.

Theresa May to Decide on Brexit

Just so you don't think we're so provincial here, there is news outside of the United States. Today, the British Parliament voted to give Prime Minister Theresa May the ability to take the UK out of the EU.

It will be interesting to see if the US and the UK form a strong trading partnership in the wake of a Brexit.

So apparently, a few people liked this...

In response to this from our President, I subtweeted today.

The President of the United States is fussing at a department store in public. What a stupid time to be alive.

— Bryan Caskey (@BryanCaskey) February 8, 2017

And it got a ton of ReTweets and likes. So I thought I'd pass it along to the blog audience. Carry on.

The Most American Bike You've Ever Seen

I came across this motorcycle today while helping a friend run some errands. He had to drop off his car at a place to get the seats redone. Next door was an auto body paint shop. Got talking to the owner about this bike he had out front. He painted this motorcycle eighteen years ago.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing it was made in America.

Brady's Super Bowl Jersey Stolen?

Tom Brady says someone stole his Super Bowl LI jersey after the game.

Isn't this kind of like stealing a famous piece of art? For example, if you stole the Mona Lisa you can't sell it, because everybody would know it's not yours to sell. And nobody would buy it anyway, because everyone knows it's stolen property.

Trump's Political Blitz

It's certainly been a busy first few weeks of the Trump administration. Fay Voshell at American Thinker makes an interesting analogy:

The president is putting into play a classic military maneuver applied to politics: keep going on a total and accelerated offensive no matter what in order to keep your enemy digging foxholes and putting up barriers -- while all the while they actually are being forced to slowly retreat under the onslaught, screaming and holding up protest placards all the way to the back of the line.

Democrats are unused to a total war offensive, as they have relied on relentless guerilla warfare and the long march. They are even more unused to being on the defensive, and are ill-prepared to fight defensively. They are aghast over the Trump tactics being applied against them, are assuming the old weapons once applied so effectively against their political enemies still work.

Trump has referenced how much he likes Patton numerous times. Accordingly, it's amazing that Voshell gets through her entire piece without a reference to Patton - who famously advocated for and employed this same sort of strategy of keeping an opponent on his heels. Despite this obvious missed opportunity, it's not a bad piece.

Go read the whole thing.

Dept. of Education Gives Failing Grade to...Itself

One of the Obama administration’s signature efforts in education, which pumped billions of federal dollars into overhauling the nation’s worst schools, failed to produce meaningful results, according to a federal analysis.

Oh.

Huh, so just sending people billions of dollars didn't actually accomplish anything? Gee, I wonder if we should keep doing that. Or maybe should we try something else?

Everyone wants public schools to get better. Everyone wants well-educated children. When do we admit that maybe we should try something else?

Gif of our current policy below the jump.

Thursday Open Thread

Been working all day. Mediation, and had to prepare for Court tomorrow. Accordingly, you'll get an open thread. Lots of work got done today.

Supreme Court Nominee - Neil M. Gorsuch

Just to start off with, if you read my blog regularly, you might recall that I picked up on Gorsuch being the frontrunner back on 1/23. So, you know...kudos to me.

I think this is a great pick by Trump, and it's another campaign promise kept. For all the things he's wrong on (and it's a good bit) I'm very happy that Hillary Clinton wasn't the one announcing her nominee last night.

Gorsuch is a great pick. He's going to be very much in the mold of Scalia, in that he's going to hew to the letter of the law regardless of where that outcome takes him - and that's exactly what you want in a judge. One line that Gorsuch had in his acceptance speech last night, which I tweeted out was:

"A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is likely a bad judge" -Gorsuch

Truth.

— Bryan Caskey (@BryanCaskey) February 1, 2017

As a practicing trial lawyer, I can tell you that it's wonderful to have a judge who will follow the letter of the law, rather than try to figure out what outcome they want, and then working backwards to get there. The proper role of a judge is to apply the law faithfully, fairly, and without any intent to reach an outcome they prefer. With Gorsuch, that's what we will all have on the Supreme Court, and we can't ask for anything better.