Tuesday, October 22

Fina's Transgressions Are Worse Than ODC Knows

The Supreme Court will decide if Fina will lose his law license for misleading the court about his grand jury questioning of Cynthia Baldwin, but his transgressions were far worse than the current case being brought by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel


by
Ray Blehar
October 22, 2019, 5:55 PM EDT

According to one of the Penn State University (PSU) alums who filed an ethics complaint, former Office of Attorney General (OAG)  prosecutor Frank Fina's disciplinary case will be heard during the November 18-22 Pennsylvania (PA)) Supreme Court term.   Fina's legal team filed their brief on October 9th, while the Office of Disciplinary Counsel's brief  is due later this month on October 29th.

The scope of the hearing is limited to Fina's misleading of the court  regarding his improper questioning of former Penn State University (PSU) General Counsel Cynthia Baldwin.   However, Fina's transgressions far exceeded violating the attorney-client privilege issues.

Tuesday, October 8

Gladwell: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Amusing

Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers"is an interesting, albeit sometimes inaccurate, read and lacks a strong ending

by
Ray Blehar
October 9, 2019. 11:30 PM, EDT

Rating 3.0/5

Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Talking to Strangers -- What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, was written over a three-year period and to the casual reader appears to be meticulously researched.  An informative read, it takes readers through a long history of misinterpretation and miscommunication among strangers, starting with Cortez and Montezuma and ending with the tragic case of Sandra Bland.   In between, Gladwell touches on the interactions of Chamberlain and Hitler, the Intelligence Community and spies (e.g. Ana Montes and Aldrich Ames), fraudster Bernie Madoff and sex offenders Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar and their victims, the Italian Police and Amanda Knox, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- among others.

Many of the stories are fascinating, especially that of the suicide of Sylvia Plath that was enabled by her easy access to carbon monoxide in her kitchen oven.   In this instance, Gladwell uses the story as a pathway to describe "coupling" and that suicidal individuals may not commit suicide had it not been for the convenience of the death instrument -- including, for example,  San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

While the book does a great job showing that most people's ability to discern truth telling from lying is quite terrible with a complete stranger and only gets worse after they've met with the stranger on several occasions.

Gladwell writes: "it is human nature to default to the truth and the world is better for it."