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Frivolous Defense It is, indeed, time for us to be turning our attention as a nation to eliminating rampant abuse of the legal system. There are people out there who are draining tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars a year out of the economy into non-productive lawyer's fees. Often these lawyers are fighting to protect their client's from the consequence of the client's own actions. I'm not talking about the frivolous filing of lawsuits, I'm talking about the frivolous defense of them. Due to an appalling web of arcane rules and regulations, corporations that are involved in truly nefarious deeds are able to fight a war of attrition against those who would challenge their hegemony. Classic examples of this form of lawsuit abuse include Microsoft's antitrust defense, Exxon's battle over the Valdez disaster, and Union Carbide's efforts to avoid taking responsibility for Bhopal. Similar battles are fought all across America every single day. Companies weaseling out of the responsibility for the radioactive waste they dumped into a municipal dump. Corporate polluters challenging laws that prevent them from substantially raising the leukemia risk in the communities downstream of them. Strangely, when the conservatives talk about legal reform all they really mean is preventing the above types of abuse by making it impossible to file the lawsuits in the first place. Morally this is as defensible as giving Kim Jong Il and the Chinese Communist party free passes on their respective human rights violations because they are too dangerous to mess with. For all of their high-flying rhetoric and claims to morality, the truth is that the conservatives driving legislation in Washington are not just indifferent to the suffering of their fellow citizens, they embrace policies in the full knowledge that they are increasing that suffering. To top off the Conservative hubris, in today's New York Times Gregg Easterbrook offers a defense of W's inanely tagged 'Clear Skies Initiative' which suggests that it is better than the old system. He argues that the Clean Air Act makes it too complicated to create rules under which companies must operate. Strangely, he fails to explain why removing the obstacles to enforcement also requires a substantial increase in the allowable emissions, and a longer time period to meet the goals. Frivolous Defense at it's finest. Meanwhile, scientists at [1]Columbia University are [2]reporting that there is a link between air pollution and genetic abnormalities in babies. Strangely this sort of issue never seems to matter in the so-called 'Culture of Life' which is more correctly labelled 'fetus worship.' References: 1. http://www.columbia.edu 2. http://maskit.net/nytimes/2005_feb16/16pollute.html