Karen Lee Torre

Karen Lee Torre, a New Haven trial lawyer, litigates civil rights issues in the federal court. Her e-mail address is thimbleislands@att.net.

Legally Conservative

Opinion: Women's Commission Shows Its Politics

The recent controversy over the conduct and remarks of state Representative Ernest Hewett, D-New London, reveals more than Hewett's unfitness for office, and Democratic leaders' condemnable attempts to secrete it.

Legally Conservative

Sotomayor Plays Evita

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn't take long to milk her "historic" rise to the U.S. Supreme Court by negotiating a million-dollar plus deal for publication of her memoir, a grandiose view of herself set out in print before she served five minutes on the Court. The attention she is getting is amazing and entirely unwarranted.

Legally Conservative

Hollywood Offers Revisionist History In 'Lincoln' Film

Connecticut U.S. Representative Joe Courtney, a Democrat, slams "Lincoln" writer and the film's director, Steven Spielberg, and demands a public retraction and notice of correction to future film-watchers. In Courtney's mind, the mere suggestion that Connecticut was an anti-Lincoln, slavery-tolerant territory of indifferent Yankees is an outrage. Courtney's opportunistic grandstanding aside, he is right to complain.

Legally Conservative

The Politics Of Standing

The constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, and a related question - whether gay marriage is a federal constitutional right - are finally heading to conclusions in the U.S. Supreme Court. As I have indicated before in this column, I really don't give a hoot about same-sex marriage. I think it a bizarre concept, but I haven't a horse in that race.

Legally Conservative

Beware Of Elites Bearing Gun Control Theories

I paraphrase one of Justice Clarence Thomas's best lines, a most devastating rebuke of the largely white liberal/lawyer/judicial class whose pretensions and pontifications about racial preferences conceal what is in actuality soft racism.

Legally Conservative

'Red Mass' Editorial A Political Joke

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I have previously criticized the procedure employed by the Editorial Board of the Law Tribune in publishing editorials. There are some level-headed and responsible members on that board, but there are also those (the ones who seem to keep hanging on and never leave) who exploit that to throw darts from behind a veil. When Law Tribune columnists speak out, readers know whose opinion it is. I, Norm Pattis, Dan Krisch and others do not write anonymously or employ pseudonyms. We do not hide behind somebody or something else.

Legally Conservative

Of Irving Pinsky And The Bar Elites

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The public reaction, here and nationwide, to attorney Irving Pinsky's request to sue the State of Connecticut in connection with the Newtown school invasion, appears as near to unanimous as public opinion on anything can get. The funerals for those killed had hardly been completed when Pinsky sought to sue on behalf of a child who safely escaped.

Legally Conservative

And the 2012 Bumble Award Goes To . . .

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"If the law supposes that, the law is a[n] ass ? a[n] idiot." Most recognize the utterance of Mr. Bumble (of Dickens's "Oliver Twist") upon being reminded of a principle of England's law of coverture: that he is responsible for the misdeeds of Mrs. Bumble, as the law presumes a husband controls his wife.