Tony Brewer

I like to browse around the Internet and read other people’s (and company’s) blogs.  It gives me a really good idea of what’s going on out in the “real world” that you might not find in the newspapers.  I was pleased to discover that the law firm of Kestenbaum, Eisner & Gorin, LLP has started a blog related to law.  I found a lot of interesting posts from the law firm, and I’m sure I’ll be going back to read more in the future.

I was reading on the Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorneys Blog that Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law this past week a law that bans motorists from sending, reading, or writing text messages.  The law takes effect January 1.  The penalty for the first offense for violating this law is $20, and subsequent violations will incur a $50 fine.  I think this is a good law, and ought to be the law in all fifty states.

I was reading an article on the NY Times website about the Somalian pirates that have overrun and taken hostage the freighter that was headed to Kenya, loaded with Russian tanks.  They are demanding a $20 million dollar ransom.  They claim that they are doing this piracy thing to protect their waters from illegal fishing, and that they want the $20 million dollars to “protect themselves from hunger.”

I think that is a load of hooey.  You don’t fish with Russian tanks, and I can’t believe for a minute that they would use the $20 million dollars to protect anyone from hunger.  I think these people are simply being greedy, and that’s all there is to it.