However, I do believe that sooner or later these doctors will get their collective heads out of their proverbial as*** and realize the obvious.

No, not all of them. Many of them will never change their minds. There is always a certain number of people who cannot accept this big a paradigm change, from low fat to low carb, from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics, whatever.

They will however, die out.

It's real easy to understand. These guys are lawyers stuck in academia and clearly ACLU wannabes.

A major problem in the US is the egotistical actions of the ACLU whose arrogant agendas are aimed at undermining the existent system while draping themselves in the American flag; they claim they are safeguarding the system to prevent abuse while they hypocritcally actually abuse it, etc.

Here's an example of the "fine" work of the ACLU:

They defended the rights of Nazis to march on public streets of Skokie Il. as if this was a necessity to ensure that the Bill of Rights would never be undermined. The Nazis' agenda was to harress the residents of the community - elderly survivors of the Holocaust and concentration camp victims whose rights are being trampled on. [All THEY want to do is be quietly left alone after all of their collective suffering and torture; they came to Skokie to have their own community and be left alone, etc.]

Thus, the "selective" nature of the ACLU which in essence enjoys an effective "special treatment" situation allows them to stir up trouble in the name of "protecting" the constitution, but only specifically on issues their usually misguided positions deem "important" enough.

The tactics are always the same, which is to disproportionately apply excessive scrutiny and legal tactics onto a subject that reasonable people are offended by. The whole point is that the legal system is fragile, and we and they all know it, yet they abuse it by sheer overload with minutia in support of issues best left unraised for the good of the vast majority.

The American system of justice may well be a good thing, but anything can be abused to the point of ineffectiveness. ACLU types know this and realize they can essentially thumb their collective noses at all of this while they "play" and exercise their egotistical "legal muscles" in the process of essentially proving that anyone can abuse the system sufficiently to get any outcome they want.

Perhaps in demonstrating that weakness, they make us realize we need legislation to shut down their stunts. To that extent, perhaps they do some indirect good after all!

The discussion by these two ACLU wannabes just shows you how activist lawyers think. Consider us as LC-ers forewarned that our enemies everywhere know how to manipulate the system to get their way, etc.

The only good thing about their article is that it appears they couldn't come up with a reason that Gorran's lawsuit could win. The offensive part is that they suggest that it may have been right instead of starting from the premise that it could be wrong.

cjl (Lawyers are NOT a good source of protein for the Atkins diet, but perhaps by feeding them to sharks we could have a good study about it!)

Sharks won't eat lawyers....professional courtesy, you know!

Clasys, I am kind of missing the leap from why this why this wacky lawsuit leads to your diatribe against the ACLU. I am no fan of the ACLU, but I think it does defend our Bill of Rights from those who don't want to read anything more than the 2d Amendment.

On the ACLU's defense of the 1978 Nazis march in Skokie, Illinois, the Congressman (Abner J. Mikva) in that District (IL-10 at the time) also supported the ACLU and, I believe, the Nazis right to march (noxious as it was). I always felt that was a profile in courage as Mikva was locked in an extremely difficult campaign for re-election at that time. It would have been politically quite easy to tear up his membership card in the ACLU as that Congressman's Jewish supporters and many, many other constituents of his district were calling on him to do.

I take it that you are not a supporter of the ACLU. Neither am I, for different reasons. But you seem to be leaving your faculties, railing against the ACLU because of couple of academic lawyers are discussing a lawsuit that I suggested is really not worth of discussion.

The reasons for the discussion are fairly obvious - Know thy enemy!

Unfortunately, in our current definition of "the real world", lawyers largely control the destiny or outcome of someone's agenda. There are numerous discussions on this board about the tactics of lawyers to promote various negative interests such as PeTA. This has nothing to do with the Bill of Rights, rather the ability of a wacko to abuse the system to gain propaganda points and undermine our common cause on this board, namely LC wol, etc.

It's quite apparent that for a certain breed of lawyer, the ACLU represents their personal nirvana. IMHO, the two lawyers discussing this issue would want themselves propelled into the same "pulpuit" where in the past, ACLU types abuse our highly-overloaded court system to further their agendas, etc.

Please don't be so naive as to even consider that the ACLU does what it does in defense of the Constitution. Rather, they bend and spin it to further their cause by highly selective interpretations of what's "important". All of us are losing our freedoms when the ACLU acts in these cases. As enablers of would-be murderers and decidedly hatemongers, they put the letter of technicality of a specific interpretation of the Bill of Rights over the right of law-abiding individuals to have a reasonable expectation of protection from something that is clearly a danger in their midst.

The Founding Fathers clearly didn't intend to defend the rights of those who abuse our system to topple it from within. Yet, the ACLU tactics are often precisely that, to chip away at our freedoms by insisting on technicalities to benefit those who, given a chance would commit illegal acts enabled by these ridiculous interpretations.

As I remember it, and to their credit, the local police paid particular attention to this "peaceful demonstration" to prevent any interactions between the paraders and the locals. As a result, it could be argued that the rest of the town had inadequate police coverage and greater risk of problems arising from said inadequate coverage, and/or had to pay overtime to the police personnel who had to put in the extra hours.

If you take these sorts of things to their logical conclusion, we all pay out of our collective pockets to allow nitpick interpretations of our laws to topple out system from within, either by sheer economic burden or at the least by gradual creeping excessively liberal interpretation of the laws that aggregate into our society being toppled.

I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but the point is that the ACLU is clearly identifiable as a force for negative impact on the country. Instead of protecting the people and the Bill of Rights, they are attempting to cause it to be reinterpreted into something that ultimately has no power to control the framework of our democracy, etc.

It's bad enough that we have lawyers who give large companies the ability to formulate business plans that include just how much to expect to be sued and how much a likely settlement would be; we don't need a few more drawing scenarios out of how to malign that which is our common cause here. Clearly their tactics and the ACLU tactics have common threads.

I admit this is getting off-topic, but it does serve to explain how I view the two lawyers in case anyone didn't uderstand that only reading my previous post, etc.

cjl (Weirdly, the ACLU is defending Rush Limbaugh!)

I found an interesting legal perspective on the case that ignores whether or not the plaintiff followed Dr. Atkins' advice or if that advice was good or not. Instead it focuses purely on the legal issues involved (including an interesting discussion of the First Amendment issues in the case) and comes to the conclusion that the case should be dismissed purely on legal grounds. Thought some of you might be interested.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commen...4_zipursky.html

Plane Crazy about research.

You know, this was an interesting thread before CLASYS hijacked it with his bizarre (and mostly irrelevant) anti-ACLU rants.

Take your political diatribes elsewhere.

Just a quick reminder to folks to keep your replies polite and helpful in keeping with the forum rules.



Personally, I found it an interesting perspective given that Jody Gorran fully admits that the primary purpose of his lawsuit is publicity and little more and that they (he and PCRM) know full well that they have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.
Personally, I don't think it would be a bad idea to have legal consequences for bringing such publicity stunts into the legal system just to discourage such actions.
Ah, yes...our tax dollars hard at work.

The last thing you need is to further burden the legal system with yet more legal consequences. What you need is to make them pay for frivolous lawsuits. Through the nose.

Legal consequences for frivolous lawsuits don't necessarily have to be jail time. Fines (which is what making them pay amounts to) would work quite well, too. Of course, that wouldn't necessarily stop someone with a big bank account and an agenda (such as PCRM) from pulling a stunt like this, but it would tend to discourage others.
Our legal system should be used for legal matters, not publicity stunts.

One problem is that the media pays much more attention to these lawsuits at their inception rather than at their dismissal, giving many the false impression that ridiculous claims like these actually get some traction in the courts.

Anyway, many states DO grant judges some discretion to levy fines on those who file frivolous lawsuits ... not sure about Florida though.

Sorry if I violated the forum rules, and for snapping at you CLASYS - it's just that sometimes I have little patience for those who I perceive as painting with an overly broad brush, especially with respect to lawyers...I can get a little sensitive about this.

I hear so much nonsense about lawyers, it isn't even funny. Quick example: a few days ago, I'm on the train, and some guy who won't take his eyes off me sits down next to me. He obviously wants to make conversation, and I stare intently at my book in order to avoid one. No such luck.

"What's that?" he asks, pointing at my shirt (I'm wearing a t-shirt with the name of the law firm where I work - yeah, I know, I'm a real company man).

I politely explain that it's the name of a law firm, and go back to my book.

"Are you a lawyer?" he asks.

"Yes."

"I hate lawyers."

"Good for you", I reply without taking my eyes off my book.

"Well, young man, when you get a few more years under your belt, you'll hate lawyers too ..." and goes on lecturing me about the evils of lawyers for the next five minutes, undeterred by the fact that I'm completely ignoring him.

I guess this is a little off-point, but anyway, sorry if I was rude earlier. Just remember that the vast majority of lawyers don't fit the ambulance-chaser stereotypes you get on TV.

You do get a distorted impression from the media and from TV shows. They generate drama by having TV judges render illogical and counter-intuitive judgements.

So what happens to nuisance lawsuits ? Are they dismissed from the get go ?

Well, it doesn't cost you anything, actually.

Umm...who pays the judges?