Jury Doody

Of course you want to avoid having people act as full-time jurors and limit the possibilities of people actively making money from serving on a jury. So I think what should happen is that as a condition of getting a driver’s license you should have to take a basic law course and pass a simple test. I’m not talking some massive law-school type gig, just a three or four hour seminar and a test no harder than the written DMV test to make sure you at least get the basics of the law and understand what it means to be a juror. Once you do that, you get a juror’s license (and are then eligible for the driver’s license). Instead of the seemingly random summons that come whenever is least convenient, this license mandates that you have to report for jury duty once every year (which can be voluntary or via summons and doesn’t mean you have to actually be selected). But, it also guarantees that if you get onto a jury you are exempt from having to serve for two years after that date. In fact you are prohibited from serving on more than one jury every two years. So if you show up voluntarily and aren’t selected, you won’t be summoned for a year. If you don’t show up, you can count on one summons per year. (Obviously these times can be adjusted based on the number of potential—licensed—jurors and the number of cases.)

The third thing is that people on unemployment, welfare, possessing a felony record or whose driver’s license is suspended or revoked have their jury license taken away. Not having a jury license doesn’t mean you can’t drive, only that you can’t renew your driver’s license until you get the jury license reinstated. Of course being on a jury becomes semi-voluntary here because if you used nothing but public transportation you could get away with never serving. That’s fine. You don’t have to register to vote now, either, and as I understand it that’s how they get you as it stands today.

The whole point of all this is to encourage people to become more involved so we don’t get stupid, racially motivated verdicts or ignorant rulings because the jury pool was so shallow one side or the other was able to effectively manipulate the outcome. If it was less of a potential burden to the individual (regardless of situation) and you could be reasonably sure that any of the potential candidates had at the very least a half an inkling of what the judicial system was all about, I’d say that would be mission accomplished.

Today’s Moment of Stupid Windows Zen

Brought to you by Lister.

There is no default keyboard shortcut to minimize the current window. The closest you can come is ALT+Space and then ALT+N. Also, there is no direct shortcut to maximize a window selected in the taskbar; except the painfully clunky ALT+Space followed by ALT+X.

Oohhhhhmmmm…. that’s paaaaants…. ohhhhmm…

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