{"id":1219,"date":"2008-07-21T22:39:55","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T02:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/21\/our-litigious-society-is-getting-out-of-hand\/"},"modified":"2008-07-21T22:40:30","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T02:40:30","slug":"our-litigious-society-is-getting-out-of-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/21\/our-litigious-society-is-getting-out-of-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Litigious Society is Getting Out of Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you read things like this, it really makes you worry:<\/p>\n

But you see, Anna is from Estonia, a former republic of the old Soviet Union. As in, the Evil Empire, world’s leading exporter of communism. So when Anna says she feels less free in the United States, where she now lives, than in the once-totalitarian regime where she was born, well … it gets your attention. And when she says Americans sometimes remind her of the gray, fatalistic men and women who shuffled along under communism, unwilling to think too deeply, say too much or laugh too loudly for fear of offending the State, it is striking, to say the least.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In case you can’t tell, I’ve been reading Overlawyered<\/a> again. I stopped reading for a while because it just depressed me. But really, this needs to stop. It’s getting to the point where people are afraid to do things, just because they might get sued – and their fears are justified. If you do anything – literally, just about anything – you’re likely to get sued. And that’s just not normal!<\/p>\n

Read the full article here:<\/p>\n

Leonard Pitts: Freedom’s less-considered costs | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Opinion: Viewpoints<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Troubling stuff, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you read things like this, it really makes you worry: But you see, Anna is from Estonia, a former republic of the old Soviet Union. As in, the Evil Empire, world’s leading exporter of communism. So when Anna says she feels less free in the United States, where she now lives, than in the… Continue reading Our Litigious Society is Getting Out of Hand<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[89,100],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society","tag-law","tag-opinion","entry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-jF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3043,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2010\/04\/22\/lessons-we-still-havent-learned-from-1984\/","url_meta":{"origin":1219,"position":0},"title":"Lessons we still haven’t learned from 1984","author":"Keith Survell","date":"April 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking at George Orwell's novel '1984' and seeing some uncomfortable parallels to our modern world.","rel":"","context":"In "My Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"My Opinion","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/05\/1984-was-not-supposed-to-be-an-instruction-manual-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1075,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/04\/11\/more-on-where-have-all-the-children-gone\/","url_meta":{"origin":1219,"position":1},"title":"More on “Where have all the children gone”","author":"Keith Survell","date":"April 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a follow-up to my posts on Where have all the children gone and More on the \"Missing Children\". Bruce Schneier writes about how overprotective we've become of children. He quotes a story of a mother who lets her son take the New York City subway home on his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "society"","block_context":{"text":"society","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/society\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1196,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/08\/free-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":1219,"position":2},"title":"Free Culture","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I just stumbled across a book called Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. It's about copyright - but also about a lot more than just copyright. It's a freely available e-book (gotta love Creative Commons licensing), so please do\u00a0 download the book and give it a read - I highly recommend\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "society"","block_context":{"text":"society","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/society\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1226,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/24\/tsa-too-much-power-too-little-accountability\/","url_meta":{"origin":1219,"position":3},"title":"TSA – Too much power, too little accountability","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This article from \"Ask the Pilot\" by Patrick Smith is well worth reading. It recounts a story that a pilot had with the TSA people. Let me give you just one little snippet: \"Ma'am, that's an airline knife. It's the knife they give you on the plane.\" You can probably\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "society"","block_context":{"text":"society","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/society\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1374,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/10\/16\/necessity-and-tyrants\/","url_meta":{"origin":1219,"position":4},"title":"Necessity and Tyrants","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was reading a discussion related to a story about how soon every email in the UK will be monitored by the government, and someone brought up this quote: \"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":840,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/01\/30\/lessons-from-1984\/","url_meta":{"origin":1219,"position":5},"title":"Lessons from 1984","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"We all know about George Orwell's 1984, right? Well, sometimes I think maybe we don't, because we keep doing stuff that seems to be taken straight from the book.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}