Paul Hastings is learning this lesson the hard way. A few words to the semi-wise^*, so hopefully your company won’t have to:

1. If you need to lay people off, lay people off, but admit that you’re doing it to cut costs. Unless something drastic has happened in the last three months, don’t simultaneously insult both the outgoing employee’s work product and his/her intelligence by throwing together a few obviously pretextual, eleventh-hour performance reviews that fly in the face of every regularly scheduled performance review you provided before.
2. Hell, even if you did can the employee because you weren’t happy with his/her work, ask yourself if you have a credible, face-saving way to spin this as a non-performance based, “sorry, your position was eliminated” downsizing. If such an opportunity exists, take it.
3. If the person you’re thinking of laying off / shitcanning / etc. is pregnant, and hasn’t anything just about anyone would consider a hanging offense, think twice and then a third time before doing anything that will make you look like a total shithead.
4. If that same person just miscarried, don’t even THINK about it.
5. If, after reviewing rules 1 through 4, you are still convinced that simultaneously terminating and insulting the employee is a smart thing to do, don’t try to bribe that employee into not talking smack about you.
6. Last and least, if you are a famous national employment law firm, and your particular branch is located in a state that prohibits noncompete and non-solicitation agreements, don’t try to bribe that same employee into signing an agreement that violates that law, as well.[See update.]

^*I’ve never really been comfortable with the phrase “a word to the wise.” After all, if the guy you’re talking to is so damned wise, why did you need to tell him this stuff? Then again, I’ll grant that any potentially good advice assumes some wisdom on the part of the hearer; if you thought he was too foolish to listen, you’d probably save your breath.

More here, here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: After re-reading the “non-compete” provision, I think it’s not a non-compete after all, but a promise not to re-apply for work there. Not a likely violation of B&P Code 16600, but a violation of common sense if nothing else. If they don’t want to re-hire her a year from now, two years from now, or whenever, that’s their prerogative, but what’s the point in contractually barring someone from even applying for a job?

Captain Ed thinks that incomepoop Al Franken is finally on his way out of politics. One can only hope.

… how much Dan Besse’s campaign had to pay the Whizz Urinal not only to endorse him themselves, but also to run five letters praising him and zero letters opposing him on a single day.

George Will’s piece on the transformation of the Democrat+ic Party from “a celebrator of middle-class American culture” to a party “who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting.” Uncle puts it a little more bluntly: vote for me, you cousin-humping rednecks.

1. Saying something you know to be untrue.
2. Saying something you believe to be true, and which probably is may or may not be true, but which the other guy really, really wants not to be true.

‘Hat tip: Uncle.

UPDATE: Upon further reflection, and after some prodding by a commenter, I’m thinking the notion guns save 400,000 (or at least 200,000) American lives per year is probably excessive. I don’t doubt that the statement, while wrong, was nevertheless made in good faith, ergo my original point about labeling it as “lying” stands. As does the greater point that no matter whose numbers you believe, successful defensive uses of guns outnumber suceessful offensive ones, unless you play semantic games with the definition of succeed (e.g., a criminal’s use of his gun “succeeds” if he persuades you to hand over the loot, but your defensive use doesn’t “succeed” unless the criminal dies).

Shorter Jim Bulluck:

Four years ago I was a naïve 12-year-old who didn’t know a thing about politics. Little did I know that in four short years I would be a naïve 16-year old who still doesn’t know a thing about politics.

A free ounce of cocaine^* for the first commenter who correctly guesses which candidate the guy is writing in to support.

^*Offer void where prohibited by law.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?

If a talk show host is suspended from a station no one listed to in the first place, has she really been “suspended” from anything?

Can anyone think of a single business - on the web or anywhere else - where the phrase “Good Buy” is a warning rather than a selling point?

Legal Blog Watch confirms what I’ve suspected ever since a group of linguists filed that embarassingly silly brief in Heller, namely, that someone would over-interpret their reference to the justification clause of the Second Amendment as an “absolute.” Almost on cue, John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun writes:

The opening phrase of the amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” is, as Dennis Baron points out, an absolute, a phrase governing the rest of the sentence. Or so Mr. Madison would have understood it. The right to bear arms therefore has a direct connection to the establishment of a militia.

[Link in original.]

So, if the militia clause is an “absolute,” that must end the eternal debate right there! Right? Well, maybe not. As Bill Clinton knows all too well, it all depends on what the meaning of “is” (or, in this case, its participial form “being”) is. “Absolute” may be a strong sounding word to most people, but to a linguist, all it means is that the verb of a clause takes the form of a participle (or, in some cases, is omitted altogether) rather than being declined to agree with its grammatical subject. In other words, if the main verb of a clause is “being,” it’s an absolute clause. If the main verb is “is,” it isn’t. Does anyone, including the “absolutists” espousing this theory, honestly believe that this:

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

would, should or even could be construed any differently from this:

Given that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Really?

Of course we all knew, non-perjury non-traps aside, that perjury was generally a crime. What you may not have known, however, is that there is no “it was all about sex” defense, at least not unless you’re the President. Who knew?