bearing blog

Administration and reception.

Canon lawyer Ed Peters writes at First Things about the appropriateness of denying Communion to Catholics engaged in public behavior that would seem to exclude them. Mr. Peters points out that this issue has been around for quite a long time, and was first raised in the case of Catholics who have been divorced and are now living in civil marriages.

This problem of irregular public relationships has certainly not gone away, but now in the spotlight is the case of Catholic politicians who ardently support abortion, euthanasia, the redefinition of marriage to include unions that cannot possibly be marital in the sense that Catholics understand them, and other evils that (unlike harm-causing acts such as warfare and executions) cannot be reconciled with any interpretation of Catholic moral doctrine.

Many Catholics who support untraditional marriages, Pelosi’s near-perfect pro-abortion politics, or Rainbow Sash-style activism profess outrage at seeing the Eucharist “used as a weapon” against fellow Catholics. Others, however, are appalled at seeing such markedly contrarian Catholics take Holy Communion.

Mr. Peters states that he, along with Raymond Cardinal Burke, holds the view that sometimes a minister has the duty to withhold Holy Communion. He adds, "Against Burke’s view and mine stand some scattered negative episcopal demurrals (Cardinals Roger Mahony, emeritus of Los Angeles, and Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., come to mind) and some short essays by academics." Here we have Catholics disagreeing in what seems to be good faith about a matter of public import; Mr. Peters, the canon lawyer, is going to argue his side from the text of canon law.

I think Mr. Peters puts his finger on the point of contention (at least among Catholics) here:

Participation in Holy Communion is achieved by two related but distinct acts: the action of a member of the faithful in seeking Communion (reception) and the action of the minister in giving Communion (administration). These two actions are not only performed by different persons, they are governed by different canon laws. Virtually all confusion over Communion can be traced to the failure to keep these two actions distinct.

Canon 915 governs administration; Canon 916 governs reception.

Mr. Peters makes a good case that, yes, ministers have a duty to withhold Communion from certain individuals under certain circumstances, and the highly publicized cases of Catholic politicians who are either living in irregular unions or fervent supporters of legalized abortion have largely fallen under these circumstances. But he also points out that the conditions under which Communion may be withheld are, indeed, narrow.

...[T]he conditions requiring Communion to be withheld must be simultaneously satisfied before the minister may licitly withhold the Eucharist from a Catholic approaching for it publicly. To invoke canon 915 [the conditions requiring Communion to be withheld] against a member of the faithful who does not satisfy all of the terms of canon 915 is....to disregard the plain text of the law and, as St. Thomas warned centuries ago, to violate the fundamental rights of the faithful.

....[I]f a member of the faithful approaches Communion publicly and gives no indication of intending an external act of desecration, even the minister’s moral certitude that the would-be recipient suffers grave moral disarray does not permit him to withhold Communion. His grief at being a material cooperator in sacrilege may be joined to our Lord’s grief at so many unworthy receptions of himself.

This is important because the public outcry against withholding Communion has often been along the lines of "Doesn't the Church know that everyone is a sinner? If they start withholding Communion from people who live in second marriages or have the 'wrong' political views now, maybe they'll withhold it for something else less serious next!"

It is important to be clear that the minister does not get to judge the entire conscience or conduct of the Catholic who approaches for Communion. The only judgment he gets to make is what is outlined in Canon 915. Ambiguous cases, Peters argues, "must be decided in favor of receiving the Sacrament."

One might argue that it is silly to stress the limitations of Canon 915 when, it seems, the problem we are living in is one of laxity, not overzealousness, in protecting the Sacrament from sacrilege and in protecting the faithful from scandal.

I think it is important, though, to point out that the rules, properly enforced, contain limitations which are meant to protect the right of the faithful to receive the sacrament. It is also scandalous to give the impression that bishops and pastors have the power to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide to withhold the sacrament. They do not.

That some of them appear to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide not to withhold the sacrament -- in situations with no ambiguity -- contributes to the impression of lawlessness. We would all be better off if we stuck to the text; it is there for a reason, in Catholic jurisprudence just as in civil jurisprudence.

 

Grabbiness.

Attorney general Eric Holder recently gave a speech defending the extrajudicial targeted killing of American citizens overseas.  Emily Bazelon at Slate writes:

We know now that the Obama administration thinks its lawyers don’t have to get a judge’s approval before a top government official makes the call to assassinate someone. As Holder put it, " 'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security." ...Holder didn’t explain how the administration arrived at the conclusion that due process within the executive branch is enough. He has refused to release the legal memo from the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice that must lay out how the administration got to here from there—the meat that was missing from his speech. And he didn’t say how the government arrived at the conclusion in September that it was OK to kill not just Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American cleric in Yemen whom the government says is linked to underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab, but also Awlaki's son, Abdul Rahman al-Awlaki, who was also an American citizen.

Emily Bazelon is hardly a right-wing critic of the Obama administration, I might add, and Slate is no Fox News.  

I want to draw your attention to one particular point that Ms. Bazelon makes in her piece:

... [I]f the Obama administration claims this kind of extra-judicial power for a few cases, what’s to stop the next president from expanding upon it—and citing this step as precedent for taking others that Obama wouldn’t countenance?

Indeed.

It's really gratifying to see this in print.

This is the point that some of us have been trying to make about the infringement on religious freedom that is inherent in the HHS contraceptive mandate. 

I'm not surprised that there are a lot of people who are happy to stick it to the Catholics here in exchange for "free" pills.  Oddly enough the same people seem to be fretting about the horrible theocracy that would be a Strawmantorum presidency.   So, like, I have to ask -- does it even occur to people that someday, a right-wing Christian might make it into the White House again?  

And, while I do not expect that a right-wing Christian president necessarily would stomp all over non-Christians' religious freedoms, I wouldn't be entirely shocked if he or she tried to.

So, wouldn't it make sense not to set the precedent now?  Not out of sympathy to Catholics or other anti-choice weirdos, but just out of simple self-preservation, or perhaps.... deference to Constitutional liberties?

+ + +

Let's talk mandate some more, this time the individual mandate.  We have the same problem outside the religious sphere, with the rather unprecedented infringement on economic freedom that is inherent in the very idea that the government can force you to buy a commercial product.

This is another thing I don't get.  It's extremely hard to resist concluding that Democrats think this is a good idea... because the person in the White House has a "D" after his name.

Okay, maybe they think it is a good idea because they like the thing that the person with the D after his name wants to force people to buy.  I can understand that.  I like health insurance.  I have some.  I am happy to have bought it.  I think it's a good bet for most people, most likely.  

But it's like nobody has ever heard of "precedent."

If this administration can force you to buy one thing, then the next administration can force you to buy another kind of thing.

This is why people need to take a step back and think about the generalities.  Democrats want to grab power so they can do certain things that Republicans dislike.   Republicans want to grab power so that they can do other things that Democrats dislike.  There would seem to be bipartisan interest in preventing executive power-grabbing.  And yet, our team colors get so much more attention.

Emily Bazelon, to her credit, noticed.  The precedent of executive secrecy that surrounds Holder's claim on the power to perform extrajudicial executions of citizens abroad -- note, this means without trial -- were set during the Bush 43 administration.

 [W]hen the executive branch won’t release the legal memos that underlie its decision-making, we’re blocked from evaluating how strong or weak the arguments are. When the federal government takes a bold and new step like this, testing the boundaries of the Constitution, it’s crucial for Holder and his lawyers to explain how and why. Instead, we’re being asked to take the wisdom of the president and his national security apparatus for granted.

That’s a precedent that the Bush administration set in the bad old days of Attorney General John Ashcroft. It was this Department of Justice that produced John Yoo’s legal memos approving waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that amount to torture, the finding that the Guantanamo detainees weren’t prisoners of war protected by the Geneva conventions, and approved of warrantless wiretapping. Yoo’s legal innovations were dizzying—to put it kindly—and the leaking of his memos in 2004 was the first step toward official Department of Justice repudiation of them.

I am a fan of transparency, and also a fan of judicial process, and consequently was no fan of George Bush's foreign policy in this area.  I acknowledge that national security needs make for a disturbing gray area both in transparency and in dealing with non-state military actors, but surely some accountability to the nation, through committees of our elected representatives, can be carved out even of our most pressing security needs.  

I am not terribly surprised to see Bush's successor following in his footsteps here.  Democrats and Republicans may have significantly different ideas about how best to command a military, manage an economy, and lead the nation, but it is pretty obvious that politicians of all stripes never saw a power they didn't want to grab and hang onto for dear life.

"When Ordinary Parenting Practices Can Land You in Court."

That's the title of a blog post at the Volokh Conspiracy today.  I encourage anyone interested in the "free-range kids" movement to read the post and then click through to the legal article by David Pimentel that the blogger is referring to.  It's called, "Criminal Child Neglect and the Free Range Kid:  Is Overprotective Parenting the New Standard of Care?"

Lots of good stuff in there -- the whole article is worth reading.  A lot of problems are caused by vague statutory language that requires "reasonable" behavior (who decides what is reasonable?) and that implies parents are criminally negligent for not eliminating certain risks to their children.  It appears that jurors are regularly ready to punish parents who have different parenting styles that appear merely substandard to the jurors.  Jurors and prosecutors who are themselves parents of only one child appear readier to punish parents who are accused of neglect because they left one child in the care of another (say, a three-year-old in the care of a twelve-year-old sibling).  If you think the mommy wars are bad enough when they are outside the courtroom, imagine being a mommy accused of neglect, about to be tried by a jury of her peers!

Homeschooling history.

I taught a fun 20th-century U.S. History session to the 10-, 11-, and 12-year-olds today:  the legal history of homeschooling.

We just finished a unit on civil rights movements of the 20th century, a unit that encompassed the school segregation cases, the larger civil rights movements, women's suffrage, and the disability rights movement.  A lot of our emphasis had been on the particular legal means by which various forms of institutional discrimination were ended or mitigated. So, for example, we watched  the TV miniseries Separate but Equal, which is like a courtroom drama centered on Brown v. Board of Education.  We talked about the passage of the constitutional amendment that enshrined women's right to vote.  We talked about how the Americans with Disabilities Act -- a piece of congressional legislation -- was fought for and passed, and how its interpretation continues to be refined by the courts.  

Having spent a fair amount of time on constitutional law, I was looking for a sort of a "capstone" lesson that would talk about one issue that's concrete to them as kids.  I found that a number of children's and teens' books about government and civics cover the "students' rights" cases, presumably because adolescents in public schools are interested in their own free speech and privacy rights with respect to the government entity that's most closely intertwined with their lives -- the government school itself.

But since our kids aren't in a government school, or an institutional school of any kind, I didn't think that would be quite so interesting to them.  So instead I decided to teach them about the legal status of homeschooling, and how that right was won in the twentieth century.  It took me a couple of hours of Internet research, and skimming through one or two books, to find the information I needed to lead the discussion.  I hardly counted the cost, because it was interesting to me personally anyway.

I began by writing on a white board a series of dates that the kids have memorized, keyed to particular events we've studied:

• 1492
• 1776
• 1860
• 1865
• 1900
• 1918
• 1929
• 1941
• 1945
• 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall, in case you're wondering) 
• 2001

 I asked them to tell me about where on the timeline the first public school in America was founded.  They correctly guessed, "Between 1492 and 1776" (for the record, it was Boston Latin School, and it was founded in 1635).  Then I asked, "About when did it become common for most kids in the U. S. to attend some kind of an 'away school?'"  (I accepted "around the turn of the century.")  We talked about when compulsory education laws became commonplace (a little bit later than that) and then when enforcement became stricter (still later, possibly not till the forties, and not uniform across states).  And then I asked, "So when were parents educating their own children at home?"  Correct answer:  all along, although for a period of time -- between maybe 1900 and 1980 -- they would be breaking the law in some set of states. 

(In retrospect I should have stuck to Minnesota for the timeline of compulsory education laws, because I did a lot of hand-waving and talking about "most states" and "many states" and the like.  Every state has its own timeline here and the overlap is not neat and tidy.  If you adapt this lesson, I think it's probably a good idea to stick to your own state.)

 So then I gave a short explanation of three landmark U. S. Supreme Court cases that set important precedents:

Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), which established that there are limits on the state's power to regulate how children are educated.  (Specifically, it struck down a xenophobic -- mainly German-phobic -- Nebraska law banning foreign language education.)

Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), which established that a state cannot require that all children attend government-run schools; the right of private schools to operate, and of parents to fulfill compulsory-education obligations by sending children to private schools, was established.

Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the most significant "Amish school case," which established that certain applications of a state's power to compel attendance at schools may impermissibly violate parents' right to direct the religious upbringing of their children.  (After I finished reading The Yoder Case by Peters -- to myself, not to the kids --  I decided that Yoder is actually pretty complicated to grasp.  I tried to keep it simple for the kids, and get the point across that there's a tension between compulsory education laws and religious freedom, and in this case the Court came down on the side of religious freedom.)

The children enjoyed discussing the legal principles of the cases, so we spent some time just talking about the details.  For example, they were utterly amazed that a state would decide it was dangerous to teach children a foreign language.  (Direct quote from the Nebraska decision that upheld Meyer's conviction before it went to the U. S. Supreme Court:  "Other citizens, in their selection of studies, except perhaps in rare instances, have never deemed it of importance to teach their children foreign languages before such children have reached the eighth grade.")   As for Yoder, I would have really loved to delve into the personal stories of the people behind the case; I wish there was a children's book about the Yoder case.  It would make a really great picture book.  Seriously.

I wanted to make it clear that homeschooling still comes under legal attack from time to time, so I shared with them two 2008 articles from Time magazine's archives: "Criminalizing Homeschoolers" and  "A Homeschooling Win in California."  

 Then I explained how the Minnesota compulsory education law used to go.  This is from Esbeck, Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1986), pp. 211-240:

The Minnesota compulsory education statute required students not attending public schools to be taught by "teachers whose qualifications are essentially equivalent to the minimum standards for public school teachers of the same grades or subjects."

I read that quote to the children and explained, "If the parent didn't have the right qualifications, the superintendent could tell them they had to send their kids to a school or at least to a teacher who did.  If the parent refused, they could be charged with a crime."  I let that sink in and then asked, "Okay, so how could a parent become qualified to teach her children at home?"

They made me read it again and then guessed... "They have to be a teacher."  "They have to have gone to college."  "If they're teaching, say, the second grade, then they have to at least have done second grade."  

"It isn't obvious, is it?"  And then I went on to explain about Minnesota v. Newstrom, the 1985 case that struck down the existing compulsory education law as "impermissibly vague" and overturned homeschooler Jeanne Newstrom's criminal conviction.  After that, the Minnesota legislature crafted clear guidelines outlining how an ordinary person could fulfill Minnesota's compulsory education law through home education.  (Those guidelines survive today with minimal changes in MN Statute 120A.22.)

 Then they wanted to know how we qualified to be teachers, so we gave them a quick summary of the rules, including the list of subjects we have to teach and our reporting requirements.  After that I asked them some questions:  

• Do you think the government should require us to teach you a certain number of days per year?  
• How about a minimum number of hours per day?
• Should they tell parents exactly which subjects they have to teach?
• Should homeschooled students be allowed to get a job for money during the hours when most kids are in school?
• Should homeschooled students be allowed to join the public school band or football team?

Interestingly enough, the kids all seemed to be supportive of heavy regulation!  I think this is because at the ages of 10-12, kids are far more concerned with fairness than they are with freedom, and they think it is only fair that our homeschools should be held to the same standards as kids in institutional schools.  

Also, they've never really had to deal with paperwork.  It's easy to support heavy regulation when you don't have a grasp of the cost of enforcement.

When they were discussing how "qualified" a teacher should be to teach a subject, I asked these kids, whom I also instruct in Latin:  "So how much Latin do you think I learned in school?"  That trap didn't work, since they already knew that the answer was "zero."  But I pressed them:  "I don't have any qualifications in Latin. But I'm not doing a bad job, right?  How is it that I'm able to teach you adequately without any qualifications?"

My 10-year-old:  "Duh!  You have a teacher's manual."

I like to think that it takes more than that, but it made both Hannah and me smile.

Challenge.

On my post about explaining abortion to kids in the context of American history education, in which I wrote that I would treat the subject as part of a unit on the changing experience of American childhood, I received a good question from "emma" in the combox.  Here it is:

Do you also ask them to put themselves in the positions of their once-younger siblings, now grown older, and facing an unwanted pregnancy?

I gave a quick answer for the combox:

Emma, that's absolutely got to be part of their education, yes -- just as I ask them to put themselves in the position of all kinds of people facing challenges in life. I've tried to do that repeatedly as we've studied American history: asked them to put themselves in the place of marginalized people as well as in the place of people who've done terrible things. I've asked them to put themselves in the place of undocumented immigrants, in the place of people who supported immigration amnesty, and in the place of people who support strict immigration law enforcement -- so they can understand where everyone is coming from. I asked them to put themselves in the place of white antebellum Southerners and white antebellum Northerners and free blacks and slaves. Heck, a couple of weeks ago I even asked them to put themselves in the place of Richard Nixon. "Can you understand how a person could imagine that their political opponents were really *enemies?* And if you thought that, would it still be okay to lie and cheat to win elections?"

How else can "do the right thing, always" sink in, how can "never help people commit injustice, never" sink in, until you really understand that sometimes doing the right thing is terribly, terribly difficult? That sometimes contributing to injustice is terribly, terribly tempting?

 I think it's a question worthy of highlighting for further discussion, don't you? 

My point, in putting Roe v. Wade within a unit on the experience of childhood, is to point out that it affected the legal status of children primarily -- much more than it did the legal status of women.   Of course, this only follows from the notion that unborn children are, in fact children; but I am sure the commenter understands that this is a fundamental assumption in my homeschool.

As with all my educational theories, we shall see how it plays out as my children get older and ask tougher questions. My philosophy about imparting the conviction that the unborn deserve protection  is that it's necessary to go beyond "abortion is bad, so don't ever have one or pay for one or recommend one, try to help people who think it's their only choice, and vote against it whenever you can."  

What's more fundamental than that?  What's more necessary than that?  Well -- ask yourself why abortion is a bad thing, why people shouldn't have them, pay for them, promote them, why it's better to help people make different choices, why its legal status should change.  The only good answer is that the unborn are persons, children, and all those judgments follow from it. 

The Catholic novelist and short-story master Flannery O'Connor once famously said about the Eucharist, "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it."  Well.  About the anti-abortion movement, I can say:  "If the unborn aren't persons, than to hell with it." 

And so the thing that must be imparted is the gut-and-brain knowledge that unborn children are nothing more nor less than children, younger than themselves.   A ten-year-old boy will protect his little sister like a Rottweiler:  I have seen it.   A four-year-old girl will carefully care for her baby brother:  I have seen it.  The whole family will gather eagerly around Mom's belly to watch for the tiny kicks:   I have seen it.  They know.  They mustn't lose this knowledge.

If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that she needs care, not violence.

If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that a scared pregnant girl is a scared young mother with a baby, that a boy with a pregnant girlfriend is a worried young father.   I'll have completely failed any one of my sons if he makes it to adulthood without being able to imagine what it might be like, what it is like for too many American men: to fear that he can't care for his family.   I'll have failed my daughter if she grows up without putting herself in the place of a mother who's afraid she can't care adequately for herself and for her child.  

I believe that to awaken compassion for young mothers and young fathers and their children is to awaken a desire to help them all, not a desire to harm any of them.  Political positions come long after that.

Readers:  What do you think of Emma's question and challenge?  A good one, no?

Shaken baby syndrome: bogus?

Brief but interesting article, with links, by Radley Balko on the changing medical consensus (and the lag in the legal consensus) about "shaken baby syndrome," or SBS.  Some of the points raised:

• Symptoms that prosecutors have argued are proof of SBS are now known to occur because of other causes, including falls, infections, and reactions to vaccinations.
• Doctors used to think that classic SBS symptoms presented immediately after shaking, so that the person who was with the child when it died was certain to be guilty of manslaughter or even murder.  New research shows that the symptoms may take 3 days to set in.
• New research also shows that shaking without an accompanying head injury produces less serious bleeding than was previously believed.
• "I shook the baby to try to wake him up" has been taken as evidence of guilt.

I'm interested in the lag between scientific findings and their acceptance in other circles -- legal circles being one or the most important.  Balko notes:

In other words, there are almost certainly a significant number of innocent people in prison today who were wrongly convicted of shaking a baby to death. The problem is that there are also likely a number of guilty people who, nevertheless, shouldn't have been convicted on the basis of science-based testimony we now know to be false. The task will be convincing both the courts and the public to risk freeing actual child killers in order to free the innocent people convicted with flawed medical testimony...

This whole controversy speaks to a fundamental tension between science and law. Science moves along a slow trajectory from inquiry toward certainty. While the courts have been eager to embrace new science—particularly forensic science—at the trial level, they're reluctant to revisit those cases when the science changes.

Very interesting, especially for every parent who's ever worried that taking the baby to the emergency room after a fall might get him accused of child abuse...

Thought crime goes both ways.

Here's the story, big in Minnesota, about the Valleyfair amusement park beating. On the fourth of July, a gang of thugs brutally beat up a man who was defending his teenage daughter from unwanted attention.

After mug shots of the black suspects were made public, the case generated intense public reaction in online blogs and news sites and was debated on local talk radio shows after many callers mistakenly believed the victims were white. The Scott County attorney's office received numerous calls urging that a hate-crime charge be filed until Ciliberto announced last week that the victims and suspects are all black.

Come on, doesn't the "ick factor" in the following facts argue eloquently against having a special category of crimes known as "hate crimes," in which certain cherry-picked motives and states of mind -- real or perceived -- mean harsher penalties?

When the public believed the victims were white, "numerous" people called for harsher penalties under hate-crime laws.  When the public found out the victims were black, the calls for harsher penalties went away.

I don't know about you, but I don't particularly enjoy living under laws and public attitudes that mean the same guy would get an easier penalty for beating up a black family than he would for beating up a white family.

The power of "best interests of the child."

That mothers are being separated from their children at all based on such flimsy evidence before an investigation is even complete is bad enough.

That the needs of breastfeeding children are, apparently, not even being considered?  Criminally cruel.

SAN ANGELO, Texas - As their parents lined up for genetic tests 45 miles away, some children from a polygamous sect departed for new, temporary homes across Texas.
    Buses filled with children ages 5 and older rolled out of the San Angelo Coliseum and Pavilion Tuesday afternoon, hours after 51st District Judge Barbara Walther signed an order sending them to 16 group homes and shelters throughout the Lone Star State.

...Young children and their mothers remained at the coliseum Tuesday night.
    Walther said adult mothers will be sent home once the state is ready to move those children. She refused on Monday to allow nursing mothers to stay with their infants and toddlers when they are moved to foster homes.

If there is any concern that the mothers will abuse these children -- and of this I am extremely skeptical -- why is there never an option that allows nursing mothers to remain with their young children under supervision?   If faced with such a situation, I'd rather submit to being shackled and surveilled 24 hours a day, while preserving my availability to my nursing child.   

The ethical defense attorney.

If a prosecutor thinks the defendant is not guilty, he might decline to prosecute.   Defense attorneys don't have the option of declining to defend a guilty man -- well, that's not strictly true, an individual defense attorney can, but sooner or later somebody has to agree to defend.   

You hear people saying that they could never be a defense attorney because they could never defend a guilty person.  Speaking theoretically (I am not a lawyer) my belief in the principle of due process means that, if I were a lawyer, I should be able to defend even someone I knew without a doubt was guilty of the most horrible crimes.  Still, you always wonder, if you were a defense lawyer and you did find yourself in that situation, could you really give it your best efforts?  Would the abstract principle that "everyone deserves a fair trial" be enough, especially in the face of the concrete:  this scummy, guilty defendant right here?   And deep down there was this question:  I know defense attorneys are necessary to guard the rights of the innocent, but does that really excuse them from all moral culpability when defending a known-to-be-guilty criminal?

That's why I was glad to read the very first comment on this thread at the Volokh Conspiracy, who provided a concrete reason for a defense attorney to put his best efforts forward at defending even the known-to-be-guilty defendant.

When I was doing criminal defense work (as a PD), I thought of myself as an Inspector General for the criminal justice system. It was my job to make certain that the police and the prosecutors did their job, and did it properly.

My focus was on the police and prosecutor. My client's actual guilt or innocence was not relevant to whether the police had probable cause, got a needed warrant, gave a required warning, or whether the prosecutor laid the proper foundation for a question, introduced evidence on every element of the offense, engaged in improper final argument, etc.

Client's used to criticize me because I never asked them if they were innocent. I didn't ask because they got the same vigorous (but honest) defense whatever the answer.

There you go.  If you think of the defense attorney's job not as "to try to get every defendant to go free" but "to make certain the police and the prosecutors do their job correctly" -- that goal is good and right independent of the actual guilt or innocence of any defendant.   I'm thankful to that commenter for clarifying my thinking around that particular bit of workplace ethics.

I hear they make money off hungry and thirsty people too.

Boston mayor tries to ban in-store health clinics.

I've never been to one of these limited-service clinics -- the kind that treat minor illnesses, offer flu shots, etc., inside grocery stores and pharmacies -- and so I can't comment much on the quality of care.  Still, assuming that they follow relevant regulations, are clear about their limitations,  and employ staff that are trained to spot bigger problems and recommend followup care... why not?     We already have a problem where loads of people are uninsured, seek primary care in the emergency room, and don't get continuity of care.  Why not have some of that care be cheap and convenient, at least?  It's another story, of course, if the in-store clinics offer care that is actually worse than the status quo for the average underinsured patient, but do they?

I won't come down on either side of this issue without knowing more about it, but I will name the most ridiculous quote of the story:  "Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong."   It's even more ridiculous when you remember that the retailer in question is a pharmacy.

ADDED:  From the comments:

It sounds like this plan would rectify a major problem in Massachusetts - we have no urgent care. You have to get all care from either your PCP [primary care provider] (translation = make an appt) or from the ED ([emergency department] translation = pay a high co-pay)...

The other problem is that you can't really find a PCP anymore - certainly not a good one (unless you're in the medical field). Former Gov Romney's health care plan mandated that everyone have insurance in the state. This meant that there was a sudden influx of people with new insurance who had to choose a PCP. As a result, PCPs quickly stopped taking new patients. And those of us that do have PCPs have trouble seeing them, due to the high number of patients.

Nobody should come to the health care debate without facing the fact that every resource is finite.   (Who said "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs?")  And not every limit can be raised quickly by spending more money on it -- the number of available slots for primary-care patients is only one example.