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Robert Lane Greene passes along an interesting case today. Apparently lawyers have taken to googling potential jurors during the jury selection process, leading to this exchange in a case a year ago:

THE COURT: Are you Googling these [potential jurors]?

[PLAINTIFFS COUNSEL]: Your Honor, there’s no code law that says I’m not allowed to do that. I — any courtroom — 

THE COURT: Is that what you’re doing?

[PLAINTIFFS COUNSEL]: I’m getting information on jurors — we’ve done it all the time, everyone does it. It’s not unusual. It’s not. There’s no rule, no case or any suggestion in any case that says …

THE COURT: No, no, here is the rule. The rule is it’s my courtroom and I control it.

OK, two things. First, although I understand the need for judges to keep order, I’ve long been annoyed by their apparent belief that courtrooms are little fiefdoms to be ruled as they see fit. So I’m glad this particular exercise of arbitrary authority got overturned.

But second: can we please do away with lawyer-conducted voir dire completely? True, it produced my favorite John Grisham novel, but what a waste of time for everyone involved. Instead, let the judge do the questioning and allow the lawyers to intervene only if they have a substantive issue to present. Beyond that, just take the first twelve people who aren’t plainly compromised in one way or another. It works in Britain, there’s no reason it can’t work here too, and I’ll bet it would cut down on court time and costs by upwards of 10% or so. How about some help with this, small government types?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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