a href="http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=206477"target="_blank">Fortune has an eye-opening article about the massive leech that is the asbestos litigation machine, and how it has, after sucking its original victims dry, increasingly turned to deep pockets that had only tangential relationships with asbestos manufacturers. The estimated take is $200 billion, at least $50 billion of which will go directly into the pockets of trial attorneys. What is worse, plaintiffs are increasingly comprised of people with no discernible illness. Facts matter little, of course, when one is litigating against perceived fat cats in Mississippi, East Texas, and a number of other illiterate bastions of organized robbery.

If you haven't done so, read Frederic Bastiat's short book, The Law. An excerpt: "It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder .. it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice."