Philip Rosmarin

The full story of this gift from my daughter can be found here.

To simply hear it:

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

No soldier ever went to war absent a prayer for victory; none came home absent the burden of it.

My many times great uncle Sam wrote that when we pray for victory, two prayers are heard.

When we have prayed to God to grant our soldiers victory, he wrote, we have also prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it.

We have prayed, he wrote, that other soldiers be torn to bloody shreds; that foreign fields be covered with the pale forms of their patriot dead; that the thunder of guns be drowned with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; that their homes be wasted with a hurricane of fire; that we wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; that we turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring that same God for the refuge of the grave and denied it.

For our sakes who adore God, he wrote, we ask Him to blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet. We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Uncle Sam, whose last name was Clemens, called it The War Prayer, the one we hear in the dark pit of our heart, when we utter the prayer for victory we hear in our ear. His publisher refused to print it, fearing it might tarnish the man many knew and loved as Mark Twain. It was made public for the first time in a collection of stories and essays called “Europe and Elsewhere,” thirteen years after Sam died.

It may have darkened the notion that there is honor and glory to win for the flag or, as he put it, fail and die the noblest of noble deaths, but I don’t think it threw any shade on Sam.

I’d rather anyway our prayers paraphrase the words of another great being, and that in Veterans Days to come we pray that every one of us — every one of us — will fight no more, forever.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

A really kind Texas gal wrote to give me one last chance to pay attention to a message she’s been trying to get out that she thinks could potentially save lives.

A message that could save lives is probably the kind of thing I should pay attention to.

It’s a guide to Good Samaritan laws, which exist in every state, but I’d bet a bitcoin buck not that many people know about them, and almost certainly not how they work. Main point is, that if you take the trouble to help someone in an emergency, and something goes wrong, you can’t be sued or jailed for trying to do the right thing.

Claudia Reynolds, outreach coordinator for Stages of Recovery, is particularly interested in how these laws can reduce drug overdose deaths by letting users or their friends and family know they can call for help without fear of legal peril.

She says during the first year of COVID-19, drug overdose deaths rose thirty percent, to more than ninety thousand. Knowledge of Good Sam law safeguards, she says, could have saved fourteen thousand lives.

Fourteen thousand. I apologize for not paying better attention.

The article she says can help us all pay better attention, is here.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, should be charged with crimes against humanity, a congressional panel there says.

They say the big B — and if you read “Bastard” into that it’s all right with me — intentionally let hundreds of thousands of his people die of coronavirus so that his economy and political future might live. His big idea was that if enough people less privileged got the virus, died of it, the more privileged might achieve herd immunity and survive to make more money than ever.

That sound like any other President you know?

Sounds like one Deborah Birx used to avert her eyes from. The former White House coronavirus task force coordinator has secretly told a House committee that had mask-wearing, social distancing, and other efforts (like testing and vaccines) she begged her own fat bastard to promote, instead of hydroxychloroquine, bleach injections, and “herd mentality,” as many as one hundred sixty thousand lives could probably have been saved.

Where is our own congressional panel urging our own indictments for these recklessly lost lives?

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Cheering news for family who watched seven of their kids blow up in the parting U.S. drone strike on Kabul on the last Sunday of August: they get free trips to see where the bombs were made.

The Pentagon is working with the State Department to print tickets for these lucky winners. Survivors of dead kids get to relocate to one of our states that don’t mind Afghan people wandering their streets.

Hard to imagine anyone not wanting to make a new life in the wonderful country that mistakenly murdered their children.