Wow. Here is the king of conflict of interest situations: English insurance companies sell deatils about car wreck victims, to the lawyers who will make claims against those very same insurers! The insurers apparently make over £3 billion a year from this odious practice.

I think that's called playing both ends against the middle.

Obama steps in to get help for local woman: You know something's wrong with the bureaucracy when it takes presidential intervention to get action on a Social Security Disability claim.

And Pigs Get Slaughtered: Allstate loses injury trial gamble: Now this is interesting. With $23,000 in medical bills, the arbitration panel awards a sum total of $25,000. So much for the fairness of arbitration, huh?

Allstate, who apparently wanted to rub salt in the plaintiff's wounds, refuses to accept the arbitration award and demands a jury trial. Result: "The Madison County Circuit Court jury took just 45 minutes on Aug. 16 to render the verdict. It included $23,820 for medical services, past and present, $3,500 for property damage, $40,000 for pain and suffering, and $15,000 for loss of a normal life." To those math-challenged folks like me out there, that totals $82,320.

Justice was done here.

Jockey Calvin Borel jailed for DUI. Well, sort of: " Borel was pulled over by Indiana State Police for making an unsafe lane movement. Hissam said Borel’s blood-alcohol content was “barely over” the legal limit of .08 percent." Hmm. Unsafe lane movement? What does that mean, exactly? I would be suspicious of the officer's motives in making this stop, unless Borel -- who is one of the preeminent horse jockeys around today -- was really weaving. And because the article doesn't say anything about weaving, I begin to wonder....In any event, it looks like Calving needs a DUI attorney.

Social Security Disability and SSI by the numbers.