In the same year that Congress enacted the income tax code a thirteen year old Atlanta factory worker named Mary Phagan was found dead in the basement of the National Pencil Company. Ever since I saw the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan back in 1987, the case of Leo Frank (pictured at right at trial with [...]
Tags: Book Reviews · Literature and the Law
“There are no second acts in American lives.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald – In 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote what is arguably the greatest American novel ever written: The Great Gatsby . Now a man named William J. Quirk, through a friend of a friend of Fitzgerald’s daughter, Scottie, has come into possession of the author’s 1919 through [...]
Tags: Literature and the Law
Nobody reads H.L. Mencken anymore, but that’s not because they shouldn’t. Henry Louis Mencken – the Sage of Baltimore – was an early 21st century journalist, newspaper man, editor and author, who invented the op-ed and aneviscerating prose style feebly imitated today by the likes of admitted plagiarizer Maureen Dowd, and not so feebly by British born contrarian Christopher [...]
Tags: Literature and the Law
I will jump at any chance to talk about Shakespeare and I just found a doozy. The Wall Street Journal law blog has an interesting post on the apparent obsession of some Supreme Court justices with the Shakespeare authorship issue. Listen: Souter and Shakespeare: A few weeks ago, Jess Bravin, the WSJ’s Supreme Court reporter wrote an [...]
Tags: Literature and the Law · Opinion
I need a break from tax talk now and then and I know of no better way to do it then to read great literature. Here are 20 of my all time favorite English language poems: Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen – If you like war now, you won’t after you read this [...]
Tags: Literature and the Law · Poems
The Western Canon of literature has been all but emasculated in recent decades by left-wing PC forces that rule academia. Dead European White Males are, in some cases, automatically excluded from curricula on the grounds that their formerly high regard is merely the product of patriarchal white society that has historically discriminated against women and minorities. Translation: Maya [...]
Tags: Literature and the Law · Opinion · Top Ten Lists
With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore, here is my version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: ‘Twas the Night Before an Obama Christmas “Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, Not a tax break was stirring not even inn’ spouse. The Bush cuts weren’t permanent, stim checks weren’t enough. The economy was [...]
Tags: Legislative Watch · Literature and the Law · Tax Humor · Tax Policy
