Author: Frank Kollman

There was a thoughtful piece in the Wall Street Journal today written by Joni Eareckson Tada, who happens to be quadriplegic.  She was commenting on a recent "wrongful birth" case and efforts by some legislatures to legalize euthanasia of people with disabilities.  I think the following paragraph summarizes her thoughts: This winter, the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disability. We need to make up our minds. We cannot...

I like to think of myself as a moderate.  On the other hand, I have strong opinions on many things.  I try to keep an open mind with people with whom I disagree, but like Mark Crislip on Quackcast, I do have standards.  Lately, I have tried to be fair and keep an open mind, but extremists have certainly made it difficult. I’m reminded of Barry Goldwater, who said:  “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.  And moderation in the...

For the first time in many years, the NLRB will have a full five-member complement.  In order to achieve this, President Obama withdrew the nomination of two controversial, anti-employer recess-appointed members, Robert F. Griffin and Sharon Block.  In their place, he nominated two replacements with similar philosophies, who will be confirmed by the Senate if they haven’t been already. Robert Griffin has now been nominated by the president to be...

I now have a new favorite religious discrimination case.  It was just reported that a federal appeals court has ruled that an employee who took several weeks of unauthorized leave to bury his father in Nigeria is entitled to a trial on his religious discrimination claim.  He had made two requests for 4 to 5 weeks of unpaid leave because the funeral ceremony involved sacrificing goats in the third week, giving his mother a haircut and anointing her...

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Bill Nojay, a New York Assemblyman who last year was the chief operating officer of the Detroit Department of Transportation.  As a labor and employment lawyer who “dabbles” in OSHA, I found the piece depressingly familiar.  Nojay, who stated that he was “a manager with virtually no authority over personnel,” talked about how union and civil service rules made it impossible to discipline...

Yesterday, our new website went “live.”  I want to thank John Armistead of Armistead Technologies for his many years as our webmaster (and designer of our prior website).  Armistead Technologies specializes in reverse engineering (you can look it up), and John had reduced the number of websites he managed over the past few years to devote more time to his core business.  Our new webmaster will continue the high quality website that John...