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Crime & Federalism 
Discussing recent news and court opinions, with an emphasis on federalism, criminal law, and civil rights actions.
Post Frequency: 307.6/day Last Entry: September 05, 2010 at 21:23:06 Recent Entries: 1538
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Vacation Reading
Posted on September 05, 2010I won't be blogging for the next week, but instead will be finishing these half-finished books. Bonfire of the Vanities: This is an excellent book because you can impose your own meaning onto it. Is it about race in New York? The unfairness of the criminal system? Or is it about the mid-life crisis of the 38-year old protagonist? Or...
Male Disposability
Posted on September 04, 2010The young man in this video was acting like an idiot. Then again, since when was being loud at a tennis match a crime? And I'm sure the fine young lady in the video politely asked him to muffle his enthusiasm. Since when does that entitle a woman and an old man to lay hands on him? Note the crowd's...
You've Made Sallie Mae Rich By Co-Signing Student Loans
Posted on September 03, 2010Man, some things are much easier to explain using a graphic rather than words. Here are the words, but do not miss out on this graphic. Sallie Mae pays its executives hundreds-of-millions each year. For doing what? For making loans that you, the taxpayer, have co-signed...
Fighting and Masculinity
Posted on September 02, 2010A good post with a lot of insight, but long-winded. I'd put it this way: Blah-blah-blah if you look like a target, people are going to shoot at you. I was once walking down a street with a woman. There were two guys standing in a door way, heckling people who walked by on the sidewalk...
Why Are People Bad Friends?
Posted on August 30, 2010Outside of romantic love, friendship is the most important aspect of a person's life. To men, friendship is as important as erotic love - which is why a wife's first goal is separating her husband from his lifelong friends. Yet we don't spend much time thinking about friendship...
People Who Don't Need to Diet, Diet
Posted on August 29, 2010Going out for business lunches is always a ridiculous experience. "Why are you eating like that?" - where that refers to something other than french fries and fatty meat. "I'm on a diet." "You don't look like you need to be on a diet." Well, no shit, right? Isn't that sort of the point? Imagine how stupid that conversation would...
Predicting America's Future
Posted on August 28, 2010There is much to disagree with about this set of predictions. It's certainly a plausible hypothesis, though: Okay, listen up. Here's how the real estate market and the economy will unfold after 2010: 1. The housing market continues to crumble. More sob stories about fucked boomers who can't sell...
News v. Knowledge
Posted on August 28, 2010During college I did something that I wish I had the will to do today - I did not follow any of the news. Any of it. When a classmate told me that the World Trade Center buildings had been hit, I assumed it was eco-terrorists. When he said, "Bin Laden," I had no response...
Perception
Posted on August 23, 2010A pop song that has been slowed down by 800%, this is perhaps the most beautiful music I've heard. Probably this is what music in outer space sounds like. J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis Because we don't move through time 800% more slowly, this is the original song: The song is the same...
Free Will
Posted on August 22, 2010I believe it was William James who said something like: "I do not believe that free will exists. You will be better off living your life as it does exist." In other words, live as if you have a choice. Some would say that this is living in a fool's paradise, but there isn't any proof that free will does...
Adolescence Extends to 40
Posted on August 22, 2010Scott Greenfield links to and comments on a New York Times article describing the unwillingness of young people to "grow up." Adolescence is extending well into a person's 30s. It's not hard to explain while: Lifespans are increasing. Any Fantasy literature fan would tell you that elves are the most playful species because of their long life cycles...
Charisma
Posted on August 20, 2010Lately I've been buying flowers for my apartment. It adds color and aroma to the living room. I bought a bouquet where only half of the flowers had blossomed. I added water, and left the curtain open during the afternoon. As expected, all of the flowers soon blossomed...
Complete Summary of the Roger Clemens Prosecution
Posted on August 19, 2010Everything you need to know.
Jesse Friedman's Moral Victory is a Defeat
Posted on August 18, 2010Ted Frank has passed along happy news for Jesse Friedman, who was wrongfully convicted of child molestation. (Watch Capturing the Friedmans.) There's no question that Jessee Friedman was innocent, that he was wrongfully prosecuted, and that the trial court conspired with the prosecution to convict him...
There is No Social Contract
Posted on August 18, 2010What would Goldman Sachs say? But if the government is just another shark in the marketplace, if the government just follows the law of the jungle, shouldn?t we teach children to obey the government out of fear, and for no other reason? Unless of course, they can get away with it? That doing the right thing is for suckers and...
Department of Justice Sells Licenses to Trade with Iran
Posted on August 18, 2010Today the United States Department of Justice issued a press release praising its work in the non-prosecution of Barclay's: Barclays Bank PLC, a United Kingdom corporation headquartered in London, has agreed to forfeit $298 million to the United States and to the New York County District Attorney?s Office in connection with violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)...
Is Gulf Seafood Safe to Eat?
Posted on August 17, 2010From Washington's Blog: The Centers of Disease Control (CDC) just announced: For the seafood to pose a health risk, the food would have to be heavily contaminated with oil, and would therefore have a strong odor and taste of oil. That is patently untrue...
Department of Justice Decriminalizes Banking With Terrorists
Posted on August 16, 2010Last month the United States Department of Justice decriminalized money laundering. Today Justice [sic] announced that trading with terrorists is now legal. As with money laundering, you must be a bank in order to receive an exception from the law: WASHINGTON?Barclays Bank PLC has reached a $298 million agreement with U...
Department of Justice Decriminalizes Money Laundering
Posted on August 14, 2010There are billions to be made in laundering money for drug cartels. No doubt many of you have asked yourselves, "How can I get into the money laundering business?" Like me, you no doubt concluded that the risk of imprisonment was too great a risk. You may have even heard of J...
Attitude: The Difference Between Prison and Jail
Posted on August 13, 2010Telling this audience that attitude is often the difference between state prison and county jail is preaching to the choir. Lest you have wayward clients, be sure to pass this story along: SAN DIEGO ? A San Diego judge postponed a sentencing hearing Thursday for a former mixed-martial arts championship fighter, saying his behavior inside and outside the courtroom warranted...
KGB Agent: "How To Brainwash A Nation"
Posted on August 12, 2010In this remarkable video, a KGB agent explains how the popular media is able to brainwash an entire nation. Demoralization Destabolization Crisis Normalization I have grown less interested in talking to people, because they are unable to comprehend the truth...
Politics is Sports
Posted on August 10, 2010Nothing will change, so I do not endorse the substance of the video. As a matter of style, it's moving. It's exciting. It's like an ad campaign for Monday Night Football. That the video communicates nothing concrete is what makes it interesting. The viewer thinks, "This is exciting! I'm pumped...
Wall Street and the Declaration of Independence
Posted on August 10, 2010In light of the bailouts, we should re-read the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...
Links: Wall Street Edition
Posted on August 10, 2010Main Street continues boycott of Wall Street. Only a fool trades into the current market. The ordinary investor can't trade on insider information, manipulate the market with high-frequency-trading robots, or front run clients. Hopefully more bankers will lose their jobs because of the boycott...
Why is Losing Weight so Difficult?
Posted on August 09, 2010Sixty-thousand dollars wasn't enough to inspire two guys to lose 60 pounds. Why not? Food is a drug. Once you start from the working premise that food is a drug, everything about the difficulties of weight loss makes sense. Fat people are addicted to food...
American Rage
Posted on August 07, 2010Hewett Packard's CEO Mark Hurd was fired for stealing company funds. He stole company funds by falsifying expense reports. What would happen to an ordinary employee who falsified expense reports? Think for a minute. Might police be called? Might he be sued? I can think of many negative possibilities...
Is Omar S. Thornton a Black Joe Stacks?
Posted on August 07, 2010While I was quick to decry the media's blame-the-victim framing of the Hartford Massacre, Norm Pattis presents an interesting analysis of the massacre. While the victims didn't deserve to be murdered, Omar Thornton does represent another man so consumed by rage that he attacked what he viewed as his oppressors: When I first learned that the shooter was black and...
Ethicists Aren't Ethical: Or, Why Sin is In
Posted on August 06, 2010Eating meat is likely the most immoral thing any of us do. Animals are sentient beings. They feel pain. They feel fear. The animals we eat are tortured hourly until slaughtered. I've never met a person who researched factory farming conditions who would argue that eating meat is moral...
Links: The United States is a Farce Edition
Posted on August 05, 2010Some skinny guy might have used illegal drugs (or something) in order to cheat Frenchmen out of a bicycle racing victory. Why care? I don't. Why does the United States Department of Justice care? Isn't there fraud on Wall Street to investigate? Imagine what a world would look like if we started paying attention only to the stuff that impacts...
World's Best Boss?
Posted on August 04, 2010Yes, it is this guy. (Via Bamber.) He has clear expectations. He is direct. The worst bosses are passive-aggressive whiners who lack the will to state their expectations. That, or they lack the vision to articulate what is expected. I'd be curious to see what the guy's payroll looked like...
Illegal Immigration: Self-Interest Disguised as Morality
Posted on August 02, 2010If you're able to afford to hire an illegal immigrant to do your lawn or clean your house, you support illegal immigration. That's a demographic fact. Rich people support illegal immigration. Those who actually live around illegal immigrants are more likely to oppose illegal immigration...
The Root Cause of Obesity
Posted on August 02, 2010Since obesity is the great public-health hazard facing the United States, everyone is talking about it. It's a fun issue to think deeply about, because there are numerous causes of obesity. Growing up, I was chubby while my two brothers were rail thin...
A Narcissist Mistakes Love With Possession
Posted on July 31, 2010"This isn't about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership." Imagine the One Who Got Away is getting married today. Imagine you have a national column, read by tens-of-thousands of people. Imagine you love the One Who Got Away. What do you do? If your answer is anything other than, "Shut up," then like Andrew Cohen,...
Breach of the Social Contract
Posted on July 30, 2010Until I studied banking and Wall Street, I was the most-useful idiot mankind had ever seen- a libertarian. People would complain about unfair deals, to which I would answer, "It's a free market." The bailouts forced me to re-examine my libertarian assumptions...
How to Increase Your Attention Span
Posted on July 28, 2010This article was too long, so I didn't read it all. Probably there is something good inside...
U.S. Taxpayers to Pay for BP Oil Spill
Posted on July 28, 2010It is criminal, as well as totally lawful, for BP to force United States taxpayers to pay for the BP oil spill: Under the U.S. corporate tax law, companies can take credits up to 35% of their loss. Since BP reported $32.2 billion charge related to the cost of the spill, 35% of that will give you roughly $10 billion...
H+ Links
Posted on July 26, 2010H+ is short for transhumanism, which is something I've studied in various forms since adolescent ventures into Ralph Waldo Emerson's remarkable essays. Today the H+ movement is focused on scientific methods of improving the human condition. Properly understood, H+ should be about total transcendece of mind and body...
The Hell of Sex Offender Registration
Posted on July 26, 2010Today Scott Greenfeld reprints a depressing e-mail from a person who is a registered sex offender. The person's life on Earth is more-or-less over: I wake up and cant believe whats happen . this has been going on now for 8 1/2 years i have no job i am broke i have nothing i am going to lose my home...
On Anonymous Blogging and Commenting
Posted on July 23, 2010Who's a bigger weakling: The guy who posts anonymous comments on a blog; or the blogger whose feelings he hurts? *** The answer is obvious, and yet nothing hurts a blogger's feelings more than an anonymous insult. We want people to identify themselves, so that we may salve the wound...
Jonathan Zasloff and the World of Passive-Aggressives
Posted on July 22, 2010Does UCLA law professor Jonathan Zasloff represent all that is weak about America? Consider this: Zasloff, tired of listening to FoxNews (and listening to people talk about FoxNews) decided that ignoring morons was too difficult. That would require some level of self-control and virture...
BP Oil Spill: "We now have killed the Gulf of Mexico"
Posted on July 21, 2010How bad is the BP oil spill? Is the well really capped? Even if the well is capped, so what? Unfortunately, we do not know, because we cannot know. One EPA official claims: Corexit is one of a number of dispersants, that are toxic, that are used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that...
The Trial Lawyer's "Tax Cut" That Isn't
Posted on July 20, 2010Running a business costs money, and under normal accounting practices, ordinary and necessary business expenses are tax deductible. If I buy a printer cartridge, for example, I'm able to claim that expense as a tax deduction. I am also able to claim that business expense immediately...
Links, Links, Links
Posted on July 19, 2010* "Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police." The government tells us that we shouldn't concern ourselves with privacy, because only those with something bad to hide need privacy. Why then does the government prosecute American citizens for simply recording an interaction with police? * The Beauty Bias surfaces again...
Triumph
Posted on July 18, 2010Holocaust survivor dances at concentration camp. It's amazing what a person can get over when he decides to actually get over it.
Scientific Framing
Posted on July 16, 2010Philosophy is the most importance discipline, because everything you believe results from a philosophical claim. This is so even with "hard science." Consider the issue of defining disease. What is aging? Really, let's talk about this in a classroom format...
Science v. Science-Fiction
Posted on July 16, 2010Most of what we hear from mainstream scientists is best understood as science-fiction - though since scientists hide the fictional aspect of their stories, we should call them liars. For decades have doctors and other scientists claimed that, "Steroids don't work...
Tyson
Posted on July 16, 2010Fascinating interview with a fascinating man. If you haven't ready, watch the documentary about his life - appropriately titled Tyson.
Watching the News is Way Worse than I-Dosing
Posted on July 15, 2010The TV hasn't been on in months, and there shouldn't even be one in my apartment. This is one of many reasons why one must never watch television - especially "news": That video is not satire. It's not a joke site - or at least not to the news producers...
Why Partisans Are Wall Street's Useful Idiots
Posted on July 15, 2010Both Democrats and Republicans took bribes from subprime fraud, Countrywide: U.S. senators or Senate employees received 30 loans?far more than had previously been known?under a controversial lending program at Countrywide Financial Corp. that provided cut-rate terms to favored borrowers...
Links, Links, Links!
Posted on July 12, 2010* The Middle Class has always been boring. See Class. It's thus unsurprising that they aren't having sex. Boring is another word for stable, however, and thus Wall Street's destruction of the Middle Class means more instability. * Who would imagine that someone earning six figures should receive overtime protection? Aren't overtime laws designed to protect low-wage workers? The plaintiffs'...
Strategic Default and Slave Morality
Posted on July 10, 2010Months ago an online dispute arouse between two people - slave masters and slave revolters. Though not a homeowner, I advocated strategic default - walking away from an below water mortgage that you can afford to pay. People like Megan McArdle (herself a welfare queen) argued in favor of slave masters: Pay your debts, plebeians! It's your duty...
Nudge Yourself Out of My Life
Posted on July 08, 2010Although physics and other legitimate sciences currently lack a Theory of Everything, the litmus test of policy philosophy and other pseudo-sciences is consistency of political theory. If you're a libertarian who would nevertheless tax people to prevent children from starving in the streets, prepare your armaments...
Barefoot Running
Posted on July 08, 2010You are wearing shoes when you walk and run because you've been lied to. I avoided buying these shoes for years - mainly out of obstinacy. Too many yuppies and white people have them, and therefore I couldn't. Yet the logic is unassailable, and not buying the shoes is only torturing my body for the sake of not being yuppie...
Computer Graphic Indicating BP Oil Spill Flow
Posted on July 08, 2010Lebron James is some basketball player, I gather. This video seems much more relevant and important to my life. Lebron James could die tomorrow. Oh well. It would mean nothing. The BP Oil Spill is something we're going to live with for decades. How did it happen? Why has the CEO been paid millions in salary - that he'll never...
A Criminal Defense Lawyer Explains the BART Shooting Verdict
Posted on July 08, 2010It was (in my view, at least) the right verdict. The BART shooting is what happens when you give every monkey a badge, gun, and Taser. That doesn't mean the monkey commits (legally-defined) murder when it shots someone.
Why Care About Mickey Mantle?
Posted on July 06, 2010One of the deepest statements of morality and community to ever appear. The message is lost on the massages. I hear people defending Obama, and before Obama, Bush. These men don't care about you. You could die; get third degree burns all over your body; raped; have your children stolen from you and sold into slavery...
Ninth Circuit Holds that Imprisoning Innocent Man is Constitutional
Posted on July 06, 2010Sickening stuff from a "judicial conservative": We must decide whether to recognize a judge-made exception to the statute of limitations for federal habeas relief in the case of a state prisoner who makes a showing of actual innocence in his original petition...
Fun With Generational Hate
Posted on July 06, 2010It's nothing new that the older generation looks down on the younger generation. The kids, these days meme has remained constant through time. The fun thing about reading old books rather than watching TV, is that you realize that every generation has attacked the younger generation...
High Frequency Trading and Market Manipulation Caught on Video
Posted on July 05, 2010This guy's voice is a bit dry, but it's worth watching the first couple of minutes. This is being done on large scales, market wide. This is felonious. The SEC and United States Department of Justice have not prosecuted anyone for these felonies.
War is a Racket
Posted on July 03, 2010On this July 4th weekend, consider the words of one of American's greatest generals - Marine General Smedley Butler. Most of us don't know about General Butler, because the corporate-owned media has a vested interest in keeping Americans ignorant of great figures...
How Jurors Think
Posted on July 03, 2010Ponder this before your next trial: I was a juror on a murder case 3 years ago...a mother charged with suffocating her 23 month old son. Similar to this case, there was no physical evidence...no blanket fibers in the child's nose or mouth and the coroner/forensic team could not say how this child died but *speculated* suffocation...
Culture of Narcissism Meets BP Oil Spill
Posted on July 02, 2010Image is everything - which means that substance is nothing.
Smart Things From the Web
Posted on July 01, 2010* "Blogging is a pie eating contest in which the prize is: more pie." (Via Scott Greenfield.) Years ago Norm Pattis and I were in the zone, and had incredible readership at Crime & Federalism. Modesty aside, the blog was hot. Got too hot, and that's actually what burned us both out...
Richard W. Beckler of Howrey to be Sued for Threatening Frivolous Litigation?
Posted on July 01, 2010If he sent a letter like this to me, I'd have filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment against him and his client. I would argue that my statements were true, and that the threatened lawsuit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Whether the recipients of Ricard W...
Banks Launder Drug Money; Prosecutors Shrug
Posted on June 30, 2010Months ago, a criminal defense attorney was criminally prosecuted for laundering money because he accepted legal fees from an accused drug dealer. He was acquitted of all charges, but he lost years of his life and $500,000 in legal fees. What would have happened to this lawyer if he had been a big bank? In a punchline that is getting...
Do Women Believes in the Illuminati?
Posted on June 29, 2010A fantastic post at The Last Psychiatrist. By analyzing a claim ("Women are more prone to paranormal thinking than men"), he reveals why almost all social science is a sham. He also reveals the insidigous practice of arguing false inferences - which based on recent comments at this site, seems to be something many people don't understand...
Freedom is Just Another Word For...
Posted on June 28, 2010Washington's Blog (where the below post originally appeared) wonders whether the people are "waking up." Yes, and no. For years, people have realized that a power elite controlled society. People were always awake. However, most Americans were able to live a middle class lifestyle, and thus had no incentive to storm Wall Street...
Is the United States a Police State?
Posted on June 26, 2010As we slaves all learned during our compulsory education (skipping school is an arrestable offense), there are three branches of government - the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. You all voted for Obama. How did that work out? Wall Street bought Congress...
Dave Weigel: Another Fraud Out of a Job
Posted on June 25, 2010The greatest advantage to unplugging from the media's Cult of Personality is vantage: You see what others do not see. If your television, computer, or other entertainment device does not tell you someone is noble, you may conclude conduct that the person is ignoble...
Hedge Fund Managers to Keep 15% Income Tax Rate
Posted on June 25, 2010As most Americans do not know - because if Americans did not know, there would be lynch mobs - hedge fund managers pay only 15% in income taxes. For once, Democrats wanted to buck Wall Street by requiring hedge fund managers to pay the same income tax rate that other Americans pay...
Can a Matriarchy Be a World Superpower?
Posted on June 18, 2010It is now beyond debate that the culture has shifted. It is - or will soon be - a woman's world. Women earn 3 college degrees for every 2 that men earn. Women are overrepresented in managerial capacities. Women have taken over. It's also the case that maleness has totally declined...
Prison
Posted on June 18, 2010Would I survive? How does anyone? Would I give up and stop bathing, shaving, eating? Would I maintain my sanity or would I quickly decompensate? How long would it be before I?d want to kill myself?
Remove BP From Oil Spill Efforts
Posted on June 17, 2010[The post below originally appeared at - and was written by the authors of - Washington's Blog.] BP was criminally negligent in drilling the well which blew out. See this, this, this,this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this...
Hedge Fund Managers Pay Only A 15% Income Tax
Posted on June 17, 2010If you're a lawyer, doctor, or small businessperson who had a really good year, you'll pay a 35% income tax on your income. If you manage a hedge fun, you'll pay 15% on your income. That's not a typo. How can this be? Hedge fund managers are paid on the 2-and-20 principle: They get 2% of the value of the...
Summary of Legal Issues in BP Oil Spill
Posted on June 15, 2010BP takes shit in the ocean; public left without drinking water.
Say Hello to "Hand of the Devil"
Posted on June 15, 2010A friend of mine has a blog that I don't read - because I only now know he had a blog. And thus one soon realizes the challenges of blogging: What if you have a site that no one knows about? Do you crap-flood your friends' e-mail boxes with blogging announcements? Not if you want to remain friends...
Summary of Cap-and-Trade Legislation
Posted on June 15, 2010Goldman Sachs has actively lobbied for cap-and-trade: Banks like JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs already have active carbon trading desks that deal in instruments connected to Europe's cap-and-trade system and voluntary markets here...
Lions and Gazelles
Posted on June 15, 2010The Discovery Channel is fertile soil for metaphors about existence. What is nature but competition for existence? We plant gardens, demanding that the soil produce fruit for us. Otherwise harmless rodents compete for our food, and thus become sworn enemies...
Too Small Too Succeed Illustrated in Two Cases
Posted on June 15, 2010Was it Norm Pattis who coined "too small to succeed"? Whomever it was, two articles I read today painfully illustrated that principle: In Astrue v. Ratliff, the Supreme Court upheld the Executive Branch's screwing a lawyer for the disabled out of $2,200...
Joran van der Sloot's Peruvian Vacation
Posted on June 11, 2010It would not be an exaggeration to say he will likely be raped to death: Joran Van der Sloot's - Possible New Home In Prison - 1 @ Yahoo! Video Joran Van der Sloot's: Possible New Home In Prison - 2 @ Yahoo! Video Joran Van der Sloot's: Possible New Home In Prison - 3 @ Yahoo! Video
Narcissist at First Sight
Posted on June 11, 2010According to the Greek myth, Narcissus looked for someone to love. He found no one worthy until he glanced upon his own shadow. There he remained until he died. New social psychological research shows that young Narcissus would not have died alone. See "Why Are Narcissists so Charming at First Sight? Decoding the Narcissism?Popularity Link at Zero Acquaintance" (here): Three...
Dealing With Parasitic Lawyers: New Policy
Posted on June 09, 2010I don't accept advertisement for this site, even though I could. I don't use it for self-promotion. My blogging is about as altruistic as a human being can be. I don't even try to build my brand. This blog is pro bono publico. One thing I'm tired of is people parasitizing off of my efforts...
Billionaire Bribes Prosecutors to Avoid Prosecution?
Posted on June 09, 2010What is this? Billionaire sex offender Jeffery Epstein has settled a dispute over legal fees that threatened a deal he made to avoid federal prosecution over alleged assaults of multiple young women and girls. Court papers filed Monday in Miami indicated Epstein had reached a settlement with lawyers appointed to represent some of his alleged victims...
Playing Loud Music is Justification for Arrest
Posted on June 09, 2010Does anyone want to deny that we live in a police state?
Did Goldman Sachs Have Advance Knowledge of BP Oil Spill?
Posted on June 08, 2010Just weeks before news of the BP oil spill hit, Goldman Sachs sold 44% of its BP stock. You can see this information here, at a legitimate site: Institution Name %Change in Ownership Goldman Sachs -43.7% Why did Goldman Sachs make this trade? No one is asking...
Reading this Blog Makes You Stupid
Posted on June 07, 2010Or does it make you smarter? There's substantial debate about the effect of the Internet and other gadgets on user attention and intelligence. All of these attacks on the Internet fail to ask: What's the alternative? In other words, what were people doing with their time before reading blogs? Pre-blogs, were people translating Homer in between solving quadratic equations? I...
Attorney-Client Privilege and Online Assaults
Posted on June 07, 2010A client, not the lawyer, is the "holder" of the attorney-client privilege. By holding the privilege, the client alone can decide whether and to what extent a lawyer may share confidential details of the lawyer's representation of the client. There are some rare exceptions - among them is self-defense...
Scott Rothstein and the Art of (Not) Accepting Responsibility
Posted on June 06, 2010Scott Rothstein is some lawyer who ran a Ponzi Scheme in Florida. He pled guilty to a bunch of felonies and is going to be sentenced to prison. Like every sophisticated criminal who gets caught, Rothstein understands the game. Here's how it's played: When you a write a sentencing letter to the judge, you must offer an explanation for your...
Scott Greenfield: On Blogging
Posted on June 06, 2010Scott Greenfield has the most-widely read, solo-authored law blog. He discusses some of the hazards of and rewards of law blogging here.
Double Standards
Posted on June 04, 2010If you did this, you'd go to prison. When a cop does the same thing, he won't even be forced to file an insurance claim.
Pay Attention to This Story
Posted on June 03, 2010Very troubling: A federal prosecutor got mad at a lady who was "interfering" with the prosecutor's case. The "interference" seems like classic free speech to me. She gave media interviews--saying the case against a third party was absurd, unfair, etc...
Memorial Day Reflections
Posted on May 31, 2010On Memorial Day, we?re supposed to thank a vet for freedom. We?re supposed to think about fidelity and sacrifice. We?re supposed to honor the dead. I honor the dead by refusing to pretend they died for anything. I honor the dead by hating those who lied to them...
College Students More Sociopathic and Narcissistic?
Posted on May 30, 2010A lack of empathy is the sine qua non of the sociopath: ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Today's college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and '90s, a University of Michigan study shows. The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over...
Willful Ignorance is Chapter in "Prosecuting Sex Crimes Handbook"
Posted on May 27, 2010The War Against Men has reached the schoolhouse: A Fairfax County jury needed only 47 minutes Thursday to find a popular schoolteacher not guilty of molesting a 12-year-old girl in their school gym this year. Sean Lanigan, 43, smiled and tears flowed among his dozens of supporters in the courtroom as the verdicts were read clearing Lanigan of charges of...
Civil Forfeiture Goes Too Far: United States v. Hull
Posted on May 26, 2010A rational person can simultaneously hold the following beliefs: In a state of nature, people who look at child pornography should be removed from the gene pool. In a nation of laws, a person who uses his property to commit crimes - by, say, growing marijuana - may have that property seized as the instrumentality of a crime...
Oklahoma Lawyers Robert Macy and Brad Miller, Added to Unethical Prosecutor List
Posted on May 25, 2010Today the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (Lucero, Murphy, and O'Brien) brought tears to the eyes of people who care about a more just criminal system. In granting habease relief to a prisoner, the Court identified - by name - the prosecutors who violated their oath of office, and their duties under the Rules of Professional Conduct...
Motivation and Men's Rights
Posted on May 24, 2010I started blogging in 2004, and in six years have never had my motivations for writing questioned. Writing about the oppression of blacks doesn't cause people to assume I'm black. Writing about wrongful convictions doesn't lead people to believe that I've been wrongfully convinced...
Discrimination Against Men Leads to Child's Death
Posted on May 24, 2010How many more children must die before judges will start treating men equally under the law? (CNN) -- When 4-year-old Ethan Stacy was reluctantly sent off to spend the summer with his mother late last month, he was in effect being given a death sentence...
The Beta Male's Slave Morality
Posted on May 23, 2010Although we live in a patriarchy that unenduringly oppresses women, over 50% of men find themselves in sexless marriages. Some beta male just wrote a long article about his sexless marriage for New York Magazine. In typical patriarchal fashion, he blames himself for his wife's failure to honor her marital vows: With so many couples, especially those with two careers...
On Wall Street and the Coming Economic Collapse: It's Not Your Fault (But It Will Be)
Posted on May 20, 2010Although American society preaches that one should never take personal responsibility for his actions, usually the bad things that happen in your life are your fault. If you sat down and examined the shackles around your ankle, you'd see that you welded the first link...
White v. McKinley: More Shocking Facts in False Child Molestation Case
Posted on May 17, 2010Earlier today the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a jury verdict in White v. McKinley. In White v. McKinley, a wife falsely accused her husband of child molestation. The cop she was having an affair with withheld evidence exonerating the husband...
White v. McKinley: Must-Read Case of the Year
Posted on May 17, 2010There is so much going on in Thomas J. White, Jr. v. Detective Richard McKinley (CA8) (here) that writing a post is a struggle. In White v. McKinley, a wife falsely accused her husband of child molestation. The cop she was dating withheld evidence exonerating the husband...
Criminal Law Links & Commentary
Posted on May 13, 2010* Connecticut criminal lawyer Kevin Murray Smith offers sage advice about probation. Add to that: Dudes, if your woman accuses you (truly or falsely) of domestic violence, get out of the relationship. There will be no happy ending. You will eventually be in prison and convicted of a felony...
Summary of the Tonya Craft Case
Posted on May 12, 2010This isn't a case I've been following closely, but do check out this summary from Popehat.
BP Halliburton Oil Spill: Worse than Being Reported
Posted on May 11, 2010As the video below shows, the BP-Halliburton Oil Spill is doing much more damage than the media is currently reporting. One might say, as people often do, "Why care about this, Mike? There's nothing you can do." That is what one would expect a society of pacifier-sucking betas to say...
Community Policing
Posted on May 11, 2010A video where a cop does not take his taser out on some kids. Imagine what might happen if more police were cool with kids:
Facebook Clears Boyfriend of False Rape Claim
Posted on May 10, 2010The irony is that this woman could have sent an innocent man to prison if she hadn't sent herself a threatening message: Zoe Williams was jailed for falsely accusing her ex-boyfriend of rape and hacking into his Facebook account in order to send a "threatening message" to herself that would add credence to her claim...
Warren Buffet: Insider Trader? (Moody's MCO)
Posted on May 09, 2010There's at least probable cause that Warren Buffett violated insider trading laws when he sold $6.2 million in Moody's (MCO) shares. Buffett has been in regular contact with Moody's executives; in March Moody's received a notice that it faced an SEC lawsuit; in March Buffett $6...
A Cynic's Guide to Mother's Day
Posted on May 09, 2010There is nothing special about procreation. It's been done billions of times. Properly raising a child is something special. "Good kids" are also becoming a rarity. Forty-one percent of children are now born to single mothers: The number of children born outside marriage in the United States has increased dramatically to four out of ten of all births...
25 Hottest Sex Offenders
Posted on May 07, 2010I think this site is safe for work, but my numbers go up to 11. Check out these hot - sex offender - teachers at your own risk. I always tell my friends, "Never date a woman with the 'crazy eyes.'" Not everyone knows what I mean. If you don't, take a gander at Debra Lafave...
The Banking System is a Shell Game
Posted on May 07, 2010The most amazing chart you'll probably ever see demonstrates that the entire banking system is based on a lie. All of the banks owe each other money. You don't need a specialization in white collar criminal defense to recognize that this is a shell game...
The Psychology of Horror Films
Posted on May 07, 2010Why does "The Human Centipede" horrify? Wikipedia entry here; Roger Ebert review here. It's just a film, right? They are just actors. Who cares? Even knowing it's just a film changes little. The subconscious is still shaken. Obviously, "It's only a movie" doesn't mean much to our unconscious mind...
High Frequency Trading, Goldman Sachs, Stop-Loss Orders, and Accenture (ACN)
Posted on May 06, 2010Imagine you had a stop-loss order in on Accenture for $36. Average investors always put in stop-loss orders to prevent them from suffering a catastrophic loss on a stock. Regular investors, however, do not have computer algorithms that can buy in sell the same stock every millisecond...
Trading Glitch was Coincidence
Posted on May 06, 2010Just four days ago, traders were complaining about a lack of market volatility. NO ONE COMES OUT and says this -- because it is like wishing for a train wreck -- but many traders secretly long for a return of volatile volatility. For the past 18 months, volatility has declined, making it difficult to generate outsized returns...
Why Adolescence Extends to 30
Posted on May 04, 2010Probably adolescence now extends to 40. Why? It makes sense when you read this post about law professors and students. A professor is afraid of humor, as a delicate snowflake might melt: Jokes have to be deployed with the utmost caution.... The first time I taught copyright, for example, I made a snarky remark about the painting at issue in...
What Are Your Jurors Reading?
Posted on May 04, 2010Have you read The Shack? I haven't, though it obviously has powerful themes of redemption and forgiveness. What if your jurors have read The Shack, and you can't speak to them? From Malcom Gladwell's Outliers is this: Those three things?autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward?are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if...
Criminal Conviction Reversed for Disallowing Discovery
Posted on May 04, 2010This is rare: Andrew True Stever brings a direct appeal of his conviction, after trial by jury, on one count of conspiracy to manufacture 1000 or more marijuana plants, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846, and one count of manufacture of marijuana, 21 U.S...
Manatt Phelps Committed Malicious Prosecution, Court of Appeals Holds
Posted on May 04, 2010Details here.
Computer Codes and Notice of Appeals
Posted on May 04, 2010A lawyers' not knowing how to use a computer almost cost a client an appeal: On March 12, 2010, the 30th and last day of the appealperiod, Vince?s counsel electronically sent a notice ofappeal to the clerk?s office, using the court?s mandatory electronic filing system...
Law Blogging 101
Posted on May 03, 2010It is the case that if you have to ask, then blogging is probably not right for you. If you're not the kind of person who annoys friends by constantly sending rants and links to stories, then you don't have the blogging genotype. Which is cool and all...
Pennsylvania Tax Commercial
Posted on May 03, 2010Yes, this is a real commercial that the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue is airing. Bad judgment, or honesty-in-government?
BigLaw Hiring is Age Discrimination (ADEA)
Posted on May 02, 2010Why hasn't BigLaw been sued for employment discrimination under the ADEA? A 40-year-old lawyer with years of solid experience would not be qualified to work in a large law firm, due to age discrimination. The BigLaw model is a lock-step hierarchy, and is based on the year of law school graduation...
Goldman Sachs is Under Criminal Investigation
Posted on April 30, 2010Ding dong the witch is (almost) dead: Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into trading at Goldman Sachs, raising the possibility of criminal charges against the Wall Street giant, according to people familiar with the matter. While the investigation is still in a preliminary stage, the move could escalate the legal troubles swirling around Goldman...
Wall Street State of Mind
Posted on April 30, 2010[Those of you who have never had the grand pleasure of knowing Wall Street people should read this. That Wall Street only exists because of massive taxpayer give-aways doesn't even enter their minds. Enjoy this glass of undistilled narcissism - Mike.] We are Wall Street...
Ho-Hum, Off to Lunch
Posted on April 29, 2010Scott Greenfeld comments on the recent case in Nevada, where a woman was sentenced to life imprisonment for allowing a teenage boy to touch her clothed breast. His best point is the saddest: And then there's the judge, whose casual demeanor toward his duty was painful to watch...
Brian J. Hogan: Goldman Sachs' Next Star Trader?
Posted on April 29, 2010The iPhone thief has been discovered. His name is Brian J. Hogan, and he's a miserable thief: The person who found and sold an Apple iPhone prototype says he regrets not doing more to return the device to its owner, according to a statement provided by his attorney Thursday in response to queries from Wired...
Georgia Teacher Falsely Accused of Child Molestation?
Posted on April 28, 2010If these allegations are true, it seem so.
New Yorkers Are Evil!
Posted on April 28, 2010They all walked by a homeless person who was on his stomach, bleeding to death - after he had rescued a woman from a knife-wielding rapist. That's the headline, anyway: NEW YORK ? The homeless man lay face down, unmoving, on the sidewalk outside an apartment building, blood from knife wounds pooling underneath his body...
Pattis & Cernovich "Flex Their Rights"
Posted on April 28, 2010A law student who reads this blog recently had a run in with the police. You can read about how he handled it over at his site. Now, here is how two people who sue cops for a living interact with police. I was in Connecticut for the week helping Norm get out from under a bunch of briefs...
Nevada Woman Receives Life Imprisonment for Breast Fondling
Posted on April 28, 2010This is insanity. A woman allowed a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts. The prosecutor did not offer any plea agreement. He took the case to a jury, and won a conviction. Although a forensic psychologist testified that the woman had a low risk of offending, and although the judge himself could not comprehend the prosecutor's actions, the result was...
Megan McArdle on Ethics
Posted on April 27, 2010If you're going to lie and cheat people, don't put it in e-mail. Or as one great criminal said: "Never write when you can speak, never speak when you can nod, never nod when you can wink." McArdle's view is very common - and is one reason Western Civilization is collapsing...
Warren Buffett is a Scoundrel
Posted on April 27, 2010In 2003, Warren Buffett said: The derivatives market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage market risk. But Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and "financial weapons of mass destruction" that could harm not only their...
Create Your Own Luck
Posted on April 27, 2010Is luck a state of mind rather than an outside force of nature? My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good...
Greatest Tasering Video of All Time?
Posted on April 26, 2010Hillbilly On Riding Mower Tasered - Watch more Funny Videos
Class Envy and Goldman Sachs
Posted on April 26, 2010One Washington Post columnist argues that class envy explains the resentment towards Goldman Sachs: For several years I've predicted that a new wild card in American life -- the presence of economic resentment at the bottom of the top 1 percent of our income distribution -- would become a powerful force for reform...
The Ineffectiveness of Blame
Posted on April 26, 2010Yes, it's true that Baby Boomers are the most entitled, overall worthless generation in human history. It is also true that the above truth is irrelevant. Assigning blame doesn't bring you closer to self-actualization or accomplishment.
Beware Bisom & Cohen and Mark W. Eisenberg
Posted on April 26, 2010Anyone intending to do business with Bisom & Cohen and/or Mark W. Eisenberg of the Eisenburg Law firm should read this opinion from the California Court of Appeals. In Day/Eisenburg, a lawyer who brought in a case was allegedly frozen out of the case: Mark Plummer agreed with attorneys Andrew Bisom and Isaac Cohen in March 2003 to represent the...
Another Day in the Life of an Unethical Prosecutor: Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega
Posted on April 24, 2010On August 12, 2009, an innocent man was arrested. After several months of hotly-disputed litigation, the innocent man was finally free. The police, prosecutors, and experts who were all lined up to send this innocent man to prison will face no consequences...
Henry Paulson Lied About TARP, Should be Indicted for Perjury
Posted on April 24, 2010TARP was Supposed to Encourage Bank Lending. Remember TARP? The Trouble Asset Relief Program was sold to the American people as a way to resume bank lending to small businesses. TARP's architect, Henry Paulson, was CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary...
23AndMe DNA Sale
Posted on April 23, 2010Only $99; today only. (If you don't know, you'll want to know.) Sale ended.
Porn Actress Saves Wrongfully Accused (UPDATED)
Posted on April 23, 2010Be careful what you bring into Puerto Rico: New York native Carlos Simon-Timmerman bought a DVD of adult film star Lupe Fuentes at a flea market while vacationing in Venezuela, only to be stopped in San Juan, Puerto Rico on his way home where he was arrested and charged with illegal possession and transportation of images involving minors...
Valor Cannot Be Stolen
Posted on April 21, 2010In 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Stolen Valor Act. Under the Stolen Valor Act, it's illegal for a person to wear unearned military rank or medals. Since the law's enactment, about a dozen posers are indicted each year. The Stolen Valor Act sends the wrong message to soldiers...
Unethical Bedfellows: Goldman Sachs and the United States Department of Justice
Posted on April 21, 2010"If you don't want to disclose it, it's material." - Gentlemen's Code of Ethics. Goldman Sachs faces a civil lawsuit for failing to disclose a material fact to an investor. While Goldman's propaganda agents are attempting to confuse people with immaterial facts, the case against Goldman is crystal clear to anyone with a sense of ethics...
Is the Southern District of New York Wall Street's Patsy?
Posted on April 21, 2010For decades Bernard Madoff ripped off investors. He cost many retirees everything. Although the United States Department of Justice received conclusive proof that Madoff was cheating investors, they did nothing. They fiddled while old people had their savings burned...
Procreating is Narcissism
Posted on April 21, 2010Bryan Caplan is a weird dude who has the goofy-eye look. There's no doubt he has a character disorder. He wants to clone himself, because he loves himself: I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet...
Levi Johnston and the Myth of the Deadbeat Dad
Posted on April 19, 2010If you really want to witness injustice in America, spend a day in family court. As the blog's tagline reminds us: Everything you know about family law is a lie. Let's start with deadbeat dads. Levi Johnston sired a child with the white-trash daughter of Sarah Palin...
Is Sex Hysteria Anti-Male?
Posted on April 18, 2010I'd let the picture speak for itself, but suspect that most C&F readers are too sophisticated to know what Twilight is. Twilight is a book series about teenage boys who are vampires and werewolves. Grown women read these books. They stand in line for the latest release...
The Myth of Corporate Speech
Posted on April 18, 2010When Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (holding that corporations have the right to make campaign contributions) was announced, libertarians went "Wheeeeeeeeee! Corporations have free speech rights, too!" As with with most sentiments underlying modern-day libertarianism, the rejoicing was childish...
Sex Hysteria is Killing Mentorship
Posted on April 17, 2010I would never coach youth basketball. When a kid stops to pet my dog, Amicus, I cringe and step away. I simply want nothing to do with children. While I'd make a great mentor and would otherwise enjoy volunteering, I never will. Here's reason number #1,045 why: The evidence against a Port Authority bus driver accused of fondling a boy...
Feminists Encourage False Rape Accusations Against Men
Posted on April 17, 2010Many people roll their eyes at the idea that feminism is waging a war against men. Yet here is what one of the supporters of the Violence Against Women Act said about false rape accusations: Catherine Comins, assistant dean of student life at Vassar, also sees some value in this loose use of "rape...
No Class Issue in Coverage of Brown Rape Case?
Posted on April 16, 2010To call Richard Dresdale a prominent Brown alumnus would be an understatement. Richard Dresdale is Co-founder and Managing Director of Fenway Partners - a 2.1-billion-dollar private equity fund. He is the kind of man who can afford to make $118,000 in campaign contributions - in 2008 alone...
The New American Ethic: Don't Follow the Rules
Posted on April 16, 2010William McCormick III was poor kid from Wisconsin. He worked hard. He followed the rules. He earned straight-As while also becoming an all-star wrestling student. Because of his hard work, he found himself a long ways away from Wisconsin - at Brown University...
Teachers Prove Pedophilia Not Limited to Catholic Church
Posted on April 16, 2010This is probably the most disgusting thing you'll read today: The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district...
Did Marcella Beth Dresdale Falsely Accuse a Student of Rape?
Posted on April 15, 2010A young man was thrown out of college without any due process after a woman allegedly falsely accused him of rape: A former student has sued Brown University in federal court, saying university officials interfered with his efforts to clear his name after another student, the daughter of a prominent Brown alumnus and donor, accused him of rape...
Feminism's War Against Young Men
Posted on April 15, 2010Brown University, although it receives billions in federal funds, does not guarantee its students procedural due process - well, at least not if you're a young white male: A former student has sued Brown University in federal court, saying university officials interfered with his efforts to clear his name after another student, the daughter of a prominent Brown alumnus and...
Ben Roethlisberger: Guilty of Being a Beta
Posted on April 14, 2010What is the difference between flirtatious and creepy? When a football player stares at a woman, he's being aggressive. When a computer programmer stares at a woman, he is being creepy. When Bill Clinton puts his hands all over a woman, he is being aggressive...
Reason Magazine is Goldman Sachs' Patsy?
Posted on April 13, 2010There are some very good points in this video - and one very bad one. The video emphasizes how much in taxes the top 1% of Americans pay. Wall Street executies like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein will pay a lot of money in taxes. Is this unfair? Wall Street executives should be out of work...
Too Many Doctors, Not Enough Medicine
Posted on April 13, 2010In order to totally freak out the American public about Obamacare, the media is now reporting a doctor shortage: Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years,...
Papal Thought Experiment: II
Posted on April 12, 2010If thirty years ago you wanted to rape children could you have named a better organization to feed your voracious appetite for children - than the Catholic Church? Other than the Russian mafia, would there have been a more superior place? This thought experiment is serious: What organization would have been better for an aspiring pedophile to join?
The Average American Male
Posted on April 12, 2010Read this fictional account as a work of non-fiction, and you'll have an understanding of Generations X and Y, and the Millennials. You probably won't like what you see, and if you already found young people distasteful: You'll hate them even more. I laughed out loud repeatedly, as the degenerate and abnormal - though one is left wondering if the...
More on the Narcissistic Generation of Oldsters
Posted on April 12, 2010This is poetic: When the nest must be defended, its eldest residents ? with the least long-term utility remaining to them ? become the most suicidally aggressive, ?obedient to a simple truth that separates our two species: Where humans send their young men to war, ants send their old ladies...
IRS Adopts Corporatocracy's Policy of "Too Small to Succeed"
Posted on April 12, 2010Does anyone remain in denial that the United States is currently owned and operated by large corporations? If you are still in denial, consider this: The IRS is auditing small businesses rather than large corporations. Details here.
Papal Thought Experiment
Posted on April 09, 2010If instead of being The Pope, Joseph Ratzinger were the CEO of Enron: Would anyone oppose prosecuting him for obstruction of justice and violations of the RICO Act? If the Pope were head of a country, would anyone oppose an assassination attempt on him? If the Pope were my next-door neighbor, would you want me arrested for walking over with...
Executive Compensation and Libertarianism's Slave Morality
Posted on April 08, 2010As CEO of AOL, Randy Falco purchased Bebo for $850 million. Bebo was a disastrous purchase, and is going to be sold at a substantial loss. For all of his hard work in costing AOL billions, Randy Falco was given an $8.5 million bonus. CEOs are hugely compensated through acts of fraud and dishonesty...
Pathological Narcissism
Posted on April 08, 2010Narcissism gets thrown around a lot - as it should, because it's everywhere. Yet most narcissism is not pathological. Self-love and feelings of entitlement are weaknesses, but one can be overcome them. Your boss yells at you; you go cry; then you start to learn that there are lines that other people set; you put your toes up to them;...
Jack Marshall of ProEthics Flunked Legal Ethics
Posted on April 07, 2010What is ethics? Or is it Ethics? Does ethics come from God or man? Are ethics a social construct? Who decides what is unethical? Ethics is a rich philosophical subject. That said, there is ethics; and then there is legal ethics. These are not the same subjects...
Narcissism in the News: How Dare Spirit Airlines Charge for a Service
Posted on April 07, 2010Flying on an airline has become a tragedy of the commons. Everyone wants to bring two large bags onto the plane, even though the shared resource of the overhead bins cannot accommodate everyone. Consequently, we all stay in line far too long while hapless flight attendants shift bags and explain to passengers that there isn't room for their luggage...
Friends or Yes-Men?
Posted on April 07, 2010Jack Marshall has apologized to Eric Turkewitz for leveling false charges against him. So...What went wrong? How can we learn from Jack? In the past 48 hours, at least a dozen lawyers with stellar reputations for honesty told Jack to back off. Lawyers who work in legal ethics for a living explained that the accusations Jack made were false...
Jack Marshall of ProEthics is a Moron
Posted on April 06, 2010I had no idea who Jack Marshall, a self-proclaimed ethicist and president of ProEthics, was. Then he showed up at a law blog, and made an idiot of himself. He claimed that a law blogger's conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct. He never cited a single rule or court opinion...
Why You Must Go All-In When Hiring A Trial Lawyer
Posted on April 06, 2010Criminal appeals are generally hopeless. If you have a house, mortgage it to hire the right criminal lawyer - at trial. If the statistics on criminal appeals aren't harrowing enough, consider that a rape conviction was upheld on appeal based on this evidence: At trial, Jane Doe X testified how she originally developed a relationship with, and ultimately became a...
Hedge Fund Billionaires Pay Lowest Income Tax Rates
Posted on April 05, 2010Did you know that hedge fund managers pay a lower income-tax rate than you? Hedge fund managers only pay 15% income tax. How? When you take a draw of your partnership profits, it's treated as income. If you, like many readers, are successful, then you're paying 35% income tax on your profits...
Jobless Doublespeak
Posted on April 05, 2010Only in America can jobless not really mean jobless. In America, you can not have a job yet not be considered jobless. Here's how: The increase in jobs highlighted in the nation's most recent unemployment report carried the sound of economic promise, but Obama administration officials said Sunday that the public shouldn't expect any dramatic improvement in the jobless rate,...
Happiness and Experience
Posted on April 04, 2010People take it for granted that they want happiness. The ancient Greeks asked, ?What is happiness?? Does happiness exist? Is it a state of being? Is happiness a state of being, or a transient emotion? ?Happiness is fleeting,? people often say. If happiness does exist ? and anyone who has been depressed, and thus has experienced the absence of happiness...
Competency Catch-22
Posted on April 02, 2010Today is the day I am going to die. Life is pointless, and not worth the struggle. Things have not turned out as I had planned. I live my life on my own terms - or not at all. I bid you farewell. None of you are to blame for my death. I have hid my suicidal desires from you...
The New America
Posted on April 02, 2010The New York Times has this sobering coverage of the long-term unemployed. In past recessions, people who lost jobs eventually found work. In this current depression, people who lost jobs are finding no work at all; or they are undermployed - working jobs well below their skills and prior wage levels...
Cheeseburger Josh: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu v. Drunk Loudmouth
Posted on March 30, 2010The skinny hipster demonstrates what an average person can do with about six months of Brazilian jiu jitsu training:
Full-Time Law Blogger Job for Thompson Reuters/Lexis-Nexis
Posted on March 30, 2010This is a job that you might find of interest.
Animal Cruelty: Teaching Animals to be Human
Posted on March 30, 2010Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday
Karen Grindle Enabled Child Rape at South Berwyn School District 100
Posted on March 30, 2010These allegations are disturbing: An elementary-school music teacher in the South Berwyn School District 100 was charged with sexually molesting numerous students over a period of several years during his tenure in the district. Some of the victims brought this civil lawsuit against the District and a school principal who allegedly knew about the abuse long before the charges were...
Men in the News
Posted on March 29, 2010Men are the new black. I will probably write an omnibus post on manhood. Until then, here are but a few discussions on manhood throughout the world: Japanese "herbivore men" are afraid of women. Men prefer video games to women. Or men turn to video games because they cannot get women - who are searching for the few men who...
Fat People Are Drug Addicts
Posted on March 29, 2010The stress eaters among us will not find this at all surprising: In a newly published study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that the same molecular mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing people into obesity...
Six Years (Off-and-On)
Posted on March 26, 2010Happy (Belated) Birthday to Crime & Federalism. The first post was on March 19, 2004. Burned through some co-bloggers, got fired from a job, lost a couple of friends; but also got citied in two federal judicial opinions, got me jobs, and gained several friends...
Dear Ninth Circuit Haters
Posted on March 26, 2010Do you even read some of the stuff coming out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? How can you proclaim that the Ninth Circuit is loaded with liberal judicial activists in light of cases like this?
Most Influential Books Meme
Posted on March 24, 2010Catch-22: Probably this is the best explication of human thinking ? ever. It also got me over puppy love. I was 19 when I read it, and could not understand why this girl whom I treated nicely ended the relationship to date a jerk. She wants a nice guy but if you?re nice she doesn?t want you ? that?s a...
J.P. Morgan to Get $1.4 Billion Tax Refund
Posted on March 24, 2010I just wrote the IRS a hefty check. I work hard to run my business at a profit. I do not take stupid risks, or gamble like a Wall Street bankster. Like a middling middle class idiot, I wake up and work hard for my money. Thus, I earn a profit every year - though certainly not Wall Street level...
Status and Happiness
Posted on March 24, 2010Numerous studies all show the same thing, namely, that people are only happen when they are above others: A study by researchers at the University of Warwick and Cardiff University has found that money only makes people happier if it improves their social rank...
The Dirty Truth About Public Defenders
Posted on March 22, 2010Criminal defense lawyers often decry the blue wall of silence. Why don't police officers speak out about corruption? Yet criminal defense lawyers defend the indefensible public defense system. There isn't a criminal defense lawyer reading this post who would, if charged with a crime, choose to be thrust into the public defense system rather than hire counsel...
Forensic Science is a Scam
Posted on March 20, 2010A groundbreaking report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) last year recognized that much of forensic science is not rooted in solid science. Many forensic disciplines ? such as hair microscopy, bite-mark comparisons, fingerprint analysis, firearm testing and tool-mark analysis ? were developed solely to solve crimes...
Teacher Locks Up 7-Year-Old Child; Ninth Circuit Approves
Posted on March 18, 2010If only the headline were misleading.
The Profitability of Tapping Into a Client's Narcissism
Posted on March 15, 2010Sorry, but rarely do "normal" people end up in the court system. Normal people ignore the slights of existence; or at least they don't think bearing the hassle and expense of litigation is congruent with the slight. Being only slightly abnormal, I have of course drafted Complaints over various slights...
Lehman Brothers Repo 105 Accounting Fraud
Posted on March 15, 2010The slicker the language you listen to, the quicker you'll land on your ass. And so it is with the Lehman 105 Repo fraud. Let's take a quick look the slick language before avoiding slipping on the bullshit. In the Business Insider, Tom Kirkendall (who has earned praise at Crime & Federalism many times but who is very confused about...
Your Irrelevance is Not My Arrogance
Posted on March 15, 2010Scott Greenfeld has the gang going at Simple Justice. Non-lawyers are furious that lawyers simply do not value their legal opinion. That's what society has come to: Non-specialists think you're arrogant for not validating them. Commenting about my post, a commenter writes: Your "update" evidences what I'm reacting to: Your clients are right to think you resent them and look...
More on the Sudden Acceleration Myth
Posted on March 13, 2010In real-time, we're learning that sudden acceleration is a myth. Yet is there anyone willing to wager that Toyota will not settle hundreds-of-millions to billions of dollars in lawsuits?
Robert Chatigny's Nomination on Hold
Posted on March 12, 2010Crooked Christoper Dodd, who is leaving the Senate in shame after taking bribes from subprime pimp Angelo Mozilo, tried sneaking longtime friend and political ally Robert Chatigny into the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. That nomination is now on hold, given Chatigny's ethically-questionable handling of a death penalty case...
FoxNews on Robert Chatigny
Posted on March 12, 2010FoxNews is now reporting about the nomination of Robert Chatigny to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The editorial is unfair, but nicely summarizes Judge Chatigny's handling of the Michael Ross case. Let's discuss why Judge Chatigny should not be elevated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals...
Is Generation Y a Gang of Slackers?
Posted on March 12, 2010Oh yeah: Striking differences emerged for valuing leisure. GenY was much more likely than previous generations to say they wanted a job with an easy pace and lots of vacation time, and less likely to want to work overtime. They also saw work as less central to their lives and were more likely to agree that "work is just making...
Sudden Acceleration is a Myth
Posted on March 12, 2010Ted Frank's op-ed shares something that everyone seems to have ignored, and about which I was ignorant: "Sudden acceleration" is allegedly an electro-mechanical process that only seems to afflict old people: The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota ?sudden acceleration? fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages...
Multi-Tasking and Legal Writing
Posted on March 11, 2010Do any professional writers answer e-mails in the middle of sentence composition? Certainly no good ones. Compare a blog posting by a decent writer like Megan McArdle with a magazine article in Esquire. The quality of writing in Esquire is superior, because it's the product of sustained focus...
Lawyers and Depression
Posted on March 10, 2010Do anti-depressants work? There's a fantastic piece at the New Yorker. Norm Pattis reproduces an interview with the author of Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease. Today at Above the Law, a therapist discusses lawyers and depression...
Paul Pfingst Killed Chelsa King
Posted on March 10, 2010Ten years ago child rapist John Gardner got lost in the system. He was able to rape again, thanks to District Attorney Paul Pfingst. In a signed confession in the year 2000, John Gardner admitted he was a child predator. Ten years later he's suspected of killing Chelsea King...
War on Drugs is New Jim Crow
Posted on March 10, 2010More blacks are enslaved today than in 1850, thanks to the War on Drugs.
Women's Domestic Violence Problem
Posted on March 07, 2010I had no idea: SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 271 scholarly investigations: 211 empirical studies and 60 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners...
Hipsters Won't Grow Up
Posted on March 04, 2010For Generation X, Y, and Z, having a child no longer marks entry into adulthood: From time to time, Sasha Raven Gross can be seen teetering around a neighborhood drinking hole. She flirts with strangers, talks gibberish and sometimes spins in circles for no apparent reason until she falls down...
Why America's Immigration System is a Joke
Posted on March 04, 2010There are eleven million illegal immigrant in the United States, costing the country billions. While allowing in an entire class of people who drain the economy of tax dollars, the United States immigration system rejects these types of legal immigrants: On December 31, 2003, Poghos Kazarian, a thirty-fouryear-old native and citizen of Armenia, filed an application for an employment-based immigrant...
How Good Cops Go Bad
Posted on March 03, 2010ABC News has this fascinating interview with a police officer who explains how the pressures from above can make a good cop go bad: "Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them?" said Officer Polanco...
Goldman Sachs is Crying
Posted on March 01, 2010In its latest 10-K, Goldman Sachs reported: ?The financial crisis and the current political and public sentiment regarding financial institutions has resulted in a significant amount of adverse press coverage, as well as adverse statements or charges by regulators or elected officials...
Exhibit A for the Universal Public Defender System
Posted on March 01, 2010If you're in the Middle Class and are acquitted of criminal charges, you'll be saddled with debt for another decade.
Suits at The Atlantic Ruining the Blogosphere
Posted on March 01, 2010Yes, Megan McArdle is an evil Goldman Sachs apologist who preaches slave morality (banks can ethically walk away from contracts, but average Joes and Janes cannot). I need my Two Minutes Hate. Suits at The Atlantic, bring the blogs back. The current look is awful...
Cooling the Melting Pot
Posted on February 27, 2010The failure to recognize black culture is racist. Recognizing and integrating black culture is now a form of racism: ATLANTA - A white Arkansas team?s win in a national ?stepping? contest has sparked a fierce controversy over whether the integration of a once exclusively black college tradition constitutes a form of cultural theft...
Entitlement Generation
Posted on February 24, 2010Listening to oldsters complain about everyone under 30 as "entitled" is getting old. Who caused the current Great Recession/Depression 2.0? Oldsters. Who got the big bailouts? The grey beards. Who sucks up nearly 50% of the federal budget through entitlement programs? It ain't the under-30 set...
Derivatives, the Market Meltdown, and the Bailouts
Posted on February 23, 2010You hear a lot of talk about derivatives and the housing collapse. Want a fantastic - and easy-to-understand - explanation? Here you go.
How to Turn a Parent Into a Kidnapper
Posted on February 23, 2010The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals shows you how. And if you're a cop, they even encourage it.
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class
Posted on February 22, 2010Whoa. Wish I had seen this video on Sunday morning rather than Sunday night, as it's really important stuff; and a hard sell for your Monday morning. It's an hour long, though the first 6 minutes is an intro and fluff. (The video will auto-play at the six-minute mark...
How Autistics View the Rest of Us
Posted on February 22, 2010The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting piece that flips the autism script: We are the abnormal ones, and this is how they perceive us. The entire article is interesting, although this paragraph personally resonated: "The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic," she says, "because you keep learning, you keep learning how...
Are Frivolous Lawsuits Extortionate?
Posted on February 22, 2010Today the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an extremely interesting civil RICO case. Bixler v. Mineral Energy and Technology Corporation (METCO) (CA10) (here). While the entire case is worth reading, one point of intellectual dishonesty needs highlighted: Plaintiffs assert that defendants? litigation tactics wereextortionate, with the purpose of coercing them to accept defendants? allegedlyfraudulent acts...
How Wall Street Makes Money
Posted on February 21, 2010Why is Wall Street making record profits when the rest of America is suffering? Why does no one care? The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there's still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street "earns" its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around "earns...
No, No, No. Don't Talk About Joe.
Posted on February 21, 2010Those who have studied revolutions and imagined starting their own have no doubt been following these types of stories: Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits...
Monogamy is a Mental Illness
Posted on February 19, 2010Psychologists claim that they are scientists. They brush aside its recent history of shock therapy; or of psychology's classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Yet today Tiger Woods apologized to all for having a normal male sex drive. He is not a man; he is a sex addict...
The Joe Stacks Problem
Posted on February 19, 2010The problem with Joe Stacks is that even people who disagree with what he did, understand why he did it. When terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, there was not just universal condemnation: There was universal confusion. "How could they attack us," Americans asked? How many children died because of revolutions the CIA started? How many Palestinian children died...
Prosecutors: Protecting Their Own
Posted on February 18, 2010Do prosecutors ever see an example of prosecutorial misconduct they don't like?
The Joe Stacks Sentiment
Posted on February 18, 2010I've been warning people for the past several months that America is desperate. The problem is that most of you are high earners. The "struggles" most of us have is earning low-six figures instead of mid- to high-six figures. We stare at our fattened navels, unaware that many Americans have nothing sticking to their ribs...
Iyanna Washington: Hate Criminal and Thief
Posted on February 17, 2010In this disturbing video, Oakland resident Iyanna Washington encourages her male companion to assault a 67-year-old man. Offering encouragement to all of us, the "old man" successfully defended himself. This really is a must-watch video (NSFW language)...
Nutrition for Lawyers
Posted on February 17, 2010Brian Tannebaum talks about his seventh year as a diabetic: I will have diabetes for the rest of my life. I was not born with it, like those that grew up with it as children, and wear insulin pumps full time (Type I), and I always keep that in perspective...
More on Iyanna Washington: Hate Criminal
Posted on February 17, 2010CBS is reporting about the notorious video depicting a college student's assault of near-septuagenarian. Iyanna Washington, a hate criminal, is attempting to downplay her role in inducing a college-aged male to assault a senior citizen: Washington admits she cheered on the younger man during the fight, as did several other people around her...
How the Mainstream Media Reports Iyanna Washington's Hate Crimes
Posted on February 17, 2010In this video, a young African American male attacks an elderly white man. You can hear Iyanna Washington make several racist comments including referring to the near-septuagenarian as "pinky" (slang for a white person), and encouraging the younger man to "Beat his white ass...
Stuff I've Read Today
Posted on February 16, 2010Bloomberg Media is seeking to uncover the Federal Reserve's coverup. The Judiciary is truly the only branch of government that can save the American people from tyranny. Wall Streets owns Congress and the President. Will the Second Circuit Court of Appeals stand up for open government, or go where angels fear to tread? How walkable is your neighborhood? I'm a...
What Does Quiet Desperation Look Like?
Posted on February 16, 2010"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
"The Rape of American Prisoners"
Posted on February 16, 2010Claiming that the rape of children is wrong is low-hanging fruit. And yet children are being raped every day. Not just by other prisoners, but by the prison guards: Adults who want to have sex with children sometimes look for jobs that will make it easy...
Why Do Narcissists Kill?
Posted on February 15, 2010Here is a very interesting post answering that question.
California DUI Checkpoints: Profit-making Scam
Posted on February 14, 2010Check out this NY Times report.
You Are Not Merely Selling an Object: You Are Selling a Story
Posted on February 12, 2010This (hat tip) is an amazing illustration of the power of stories:. the Significant Objects Project, an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that ?narrative transforms the insignificant into the significant.? Or, put differently, the goal was to determine whether you could take an object worth very little and make it worth much more by giving it a story, by...
Sergey Aleynikov Indicted
Posted on February 12, 2010We'll have more on this false and malicious prosecution later: Federal prosecutors said Thursday that Sergey Aleynikov, a former computer programmer at Goldman Sachs, had been indicted on charges that he stole proprietary software that the firm uses to make rapid-fire trades in the financial markets...
New Year's Resolutions
Posted on February 09, 2010Do you make them? I don't, though I do seek improvement every year. Here are my before-and-after photographs - an 80-lb. weight loss. Here is one of my best friends, who turns 40 this year. He looks better at 40 than when I first met him - when he was 27...
You Are Who You Choose
Posted on February 08, 2010Over the past decade, Buddhism, Taoism, and Greek and Roman wisdom are all being scientifically validated. Probably there is little reason to read past Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. In general: You are who you choose to be. You become your actions. Epictetus said: "If you want to be a writer...
Virtue Doesn't Keep the Lights On
Posted on February 08, 2010Never expect compensation for a good deed. Rarely will those you help ever even bother to thank you - let alone pay you. Just ask Anne Danaher. Anne Danaher, Erin Brockovitch style, was a non-lawyer who spent thousands of hours fighting for a cause she believed was just...
Narcissism Watch: Spend Money to Look Like the "Working Man"
Posted on February 03, 2010I have worked at a junk yard and detasseled corn. I know something of the "working man." I made many sacrifices and worked very hard so that I would not end up like the working man. Indeed, my father and I got into a huge argument when I was young: He made me quit my job at the junk yard,...
See a Narcissist Blog
Posted on February 02, 2010Some guy who has a so-so blog and has been blogging for all of a few months has decided that blogging culture must change. This cultural shift, coincidentally, totally overlaps with his personal interests. In a perfectly sensible post, Scott Greenfeld noted that people new to the party might think about learning the culture before seeking to reform it: The...
Corrupt Cops and Prosecutors Lose Lawsuit Against John Grisham
Posted on February 01, 2010A bunch of corrupt and/or incompetent police and prosecutors had an innocent man sent to prison to rot for over a decade. John Grisham wrote a book about the police and prosecutors. What do you suppose happened? Did Scalia's new police professionals reflect on how they sent an innocent man to prison? Did they seek to improve police procedures in...
California Court of Appeal Carves Out "Low Value" Exception to First Amendment (Catsouras v. State of California Highway Patrol)
Posted on February 01, 2010Catsouras v. State of California Highway Patrol (opinion here; case discussion here), a newly-issued California Court of Appeal Opinion, raises important First Amendment issues. In Catsouras, two California Highway Patrol officers forwarded crime-scene photos of an 18-year old who died after crashing her father's stolen Porsche into a guide rail...
Nikki Catsouras: Elevating the Dead's Right to Privacy Over the Living's Right to Free Speech
Posted on January 31, 2010Nikki Catsouras was the product of an indulgent Orange County, California lifestyle. When she was 18, she took her father's car without his permission (he called 9-1-1 to report her) and took it on a joy ride. She got the Porsche up to 100 miles-per-hour and clipped another car, before crashing to her own death...
Old People Lack Wisdom
Posted on January 28, 2010One of the more troubling myths is that, "With age, comes reason." Aristotle did his best work at 37. Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in his 40s. Nevertheless, we all grow up being told to respect our elders, because they are so wise. I've received little wisdom from my elders, which is why I was reading Aristotle at 19 rather than...
We Are in the Second Great Depression
Posted on January 28, 2010Under the U-6 unemployment numbers, the United States is at 17.3% unemployment. Basically, we are living in the Great Depression. There are no bread lines because of unemployment benefits, welfare, a huge federal employment sector where the employee can print its down money, and greater aggregate wealth...
Calorie Restriction, Resveratrol, and Intermittent Fasting
Posted on January 24, 2010If I talk about narcissism often, it's because narcissism is everywhere. Let's talk health care. Want health care reform? I have a simple, scientifically-proven solution for you. Caloric restriction is an effective intervention for delaying age-related disease and extending good health into later ages of the mammalian lifespan...
Prop Trading: How Goldman Sachs Gambles With Your Money
Posted on January 21, 2010One of the most scandalously delicious ways in which Wall Street cheats taxpayers is through prop trading. This is good stuff, so stick around. The Federal Reserve loans money to Goldman Sachs at 0.25% interest. That's not a typo. Goldman Sachs borrows money interest free from the Federal Reserve...
Big Brother Strikes Back
Posted on January 20, 2010Many people feared digital technologies, especially the omnipresence of video cameras. Remembering the Cliff Notes of 1984, they screamed, "Big Brother is watching!" Yet videos actually worked to the benefit of the citizenry. Most of us have nothing to fear from surveillance...
Portrait of a Narcissist as a Killer
Posted on January 18, 2010The Last Psychiatrist has this interesting post about Christian Longo, who was recently profiled by a disgraced New York Times reporter in Esquire Magazine. Check it out. The post is interesting because it answers the typical, "How could someone do that?" question: Longo was not a violent or mean person...
"Stay Hungry" as Universal Principle?
Posted on January 18, 2010If you want to perceive the world differently, don't eat for a day - or eat very little. The world will appear differently. You'll sense new smells, new sights. Bland food will suddenly become delicious. If you want to force yourself to "eat healthier," don't eat for a day...
But For Video...
Posted on January 18, 2010But for this video, the citizen would have plead guilty to resisting arrest. When are judges going to start watching videos documenting police abuse?
Haiti Donations
Posted on January 13, 2010Around 500,000 people are dead. Bones are broken and skulls are crushed. People are suffering. What can you do? You can ease some suffering, that's for sure. Even a small donation to the right charity can go a long way. Partners in Health is an excellent charity...
Prosecutorial Misconduct in Rome
Posted on January 10, 2010In Rome, prosecutorial misconduct was a serious offense. Under the Remmian Law, a prosecutor who failed to prove his case would have his forehead branded with the letter, "K," for calumniator. Cicero, Murder Trials (Michael Grant). The laws of Rome read: Tit...
Troy Benson is an Unethical Prosecutor
Posted on January 09, 2010The Recorder is reporting: A Santa Clara County, Calif., Superior Court judge cited "grossly shocking" prosecutorial conduct in dismissing a child sexual assault case Wednesday. In a written order (pdf), Judge Andrea Bryan described a "rare and concerning case of egregious prosecutorial misconduct" following a reversal for a Brady violation in defendant Augustine Uribe's case...
How Police View Excessive Force Investigations
Posted on January 07, 2010If you want to know how police think, then you should read books marketed towards police. One book I just ordered, Deadly Force Encounters: What Cops Need To Know To Mentally And Physically Prepare For And Survive A Gunfight (here), says this about police shootings: In a cop's world it's kill or be killed, but the truth of the matter...
Most Interesting Man on the Internet?
Posted on January 07, 2010I don't know, but this guy (younish, I think) is definitely a contender: http://twitter.com/bakadesuyo He has intellectual curiosity and the time to read widely. I highly recommend that you follow him on Twitter; or if you don't use Twitter, that you bookmark his Twitter page as you would any other website...
Batza & Associates
Posted on January 05, 2010[Disclosure: I did not receive - directly or indirectly - any remuneration, discount, or thing of value for this review.] A couple of years ago, we hired Batza & Associates to handle a sensitive sexual-assault prosecution. They outperformed our expectations...
The Aging Brain and Cognitive Decline
Posted on January 04, 2010Cognitive enhancement is finally going mainstream. Yet another idea I was 15 years ahead of. Been a member of the Life Extension Foundation since my teens. You should join. It should be called Life Enhancement Foundation, since I'm really not trying to live to 100, but instead want to avoid the negative aspects of aging...
Crime Victims As Sociopaths
Posted on January 03, 2010Approximately 4% of Americans are sociopaths. In a country of 300 million, that's a lot of sociopaths. Why then is it to hard to imagine that many crime victims are sociopaths? One of the many myths of criminal law is that there exists "hard evidence" in most cases...
Fifteen Minutes
Posted on January 01, 2010Law is not quantum physics, but nonetheless requires some heavy lifting. Why then do lawyers check e-mail and phone messages constantly? In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages...
Best Criminal Law Blog Post of 2009
Posted on January 01, 2010The contest is over, and the winner is here.
A Nation of Children
Posted on January 01, 2010David Brooks had the last must-read column of 2009. In, "The God That Fails" he wrote: During the middle third of the 20th century, Americans had impressive faith in their own institutions. It was not because these institutions always worked well. The Congress and the Federal Reserve exacerbated the Great Depression...
Media Ethics and Checkbook Journalism
Posted on December 30, 2009Most outrage results in an attack on the power structure. Thus, people are outraged that one of the men who subdued the Nigerian fire starter wants paid for his story. Paying someone for his story is "unethical," and is referred to as "checkbook journalism...
Terrorism and the Bailouts
Posted on December 29, 2009On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld appeared before Congress with some shocking news: [Military] auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends. "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted...
Is Monex a Fraud?
Posted on December 28, 2009Monex sued two web site proprietors for publishing truthful information, such as this: Under the injunction, the [web site] cannot publicize, for example, the accurate fact that the Better Business Bureau currently gives Monex a rating grade of F, which a BBB site says means, "We strongly question the company's reliability...
Nigerian Fire Starter Not Al-Qaeda
Posted on December 27, 2009Some idiot lights himself on fire. Must be Al-Qaeda. The Administration was willing to run with that theme. Scare everyone. It didn't work. On Facebook, the sentiment was mixed between eye-rolling and outrage...Am I supposed to believe this? How dare the government try to make this seem like a terrorist plot! Most everyone is realizing that terrorism is a lie...
Self-Reliance or Helplessness?
Posted on December 27, 2009What is the moral of the failed "terrorist" attack? The moral is simple: Take responsibility for your own life. Don't expect the police to help. Yet what message is actually being preached? More security! More government! Give the man who detained the Nigerian fire bomber a medal...
Christmas Presents
Posted on December 25, 2009The best presents we receive are spiritual gifts from people. Each year it's helpful to think of what others have done for you, and to thank them. Many people have trouble with this. Expressing sentiment is troublesome in our culture of narcissism. Expressing gratitude requires one to become in touch with her emotions - her true self...
Christmas Blogging
Posted on December 25, 2009When I was five years old, I told everyone on the school bus that Santa Claus did not exist. Everyone told me I was wrong, because their parents said that Santa Clause existed. Three decades later, and it seems my life hasn't changed. Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.
Megan McArdle is Humiliated
Posted on December 23, 2009In response to the argument that homeowners - i.e., regular working stiffs - owed banks no moral obligation to pay mortgages on an underwater property, Megan McArdle flipped out. Of course people should! In this very polite slate essay, Daniel Gross explains why McArdle is an embarrassment to thinking people everywhere: Blogger Megan McArdle expressed disdain for people who chose...
Is Tiger Woods on Steroids?
Posted on December 23, 2009I don't care about Tiger Woods, but I do care about steroids and performance enhancing drugs. It seems that Tiger Woods is at least peripherally linked to performance enhancing drugs. Many thus wonder: Is Tiger on "juice"? Well, of course he is. The dominate theme about steroids (one class of performance-enhancing drugs) is that people use PEDs to get more...
Kozinski v. Barack Obama (In Re: Karen Golinski)
Posted on December 22, 2009If there is one person the Obama Administration does not want to mess with, it's Judge Alex Kozinski. You will not win a battle of will or a battle of wits. Yet Obama is waging war against Kozinski. And against gay rights. Oh, yeah. A month ago, Judge Kozinski issued an order demanding that the Office of Personnel Management, for...
California Attorney General's Office is Unethical, Court Proclaims
Posted on December 21, 2009Law professor Shaun Martin found this disturbing language from an opinion issued today: "While it is clear that this case was not moot at the time of our decision, we feel constrained to comment on the circumstances surrounding the Director?s bringing this ?new? law to our attention...
America in One Picture
Posted on December 21, 2009I could spend all morning thinking about this picture: Unfortunately, I only have five minutes. If you don't know the players: Elliot Spitzer, as New York Attorney General, prosecuted Henry Blodget, a stock analysis, for hyping stocks that Blodget personally viewed as dogs...
Shadows Are Not Reality
Posted on December 20, 2009Frank Rich has produced a remarkable essay - "Tiger Woods, Person of the Year." The essay is writing at its best - insightful, wise, reality-enhancing. The essay's message will be given many pseduo-knowingily nods from a society of narcissists. It's message will be missed, since people are a product of their cultures...
Jim Harris, Seattle Lawyer Spammer; David Sheehan Spammer
Posted on December 17, 2009In 2006, I started receiving spam from California lawyer David Sheehan. Actually, research revealed that David Sheehan's real name is Saeed Reza Sehizadeh. On his law firm's website, Sheehan/Sehizadeh writes: "My name is Saeed R. Sehizadeh aka David Sheehan...
What's Up With Law Blogs?
Posted on December 17, 2009Colin Samuels has a nice collection of law blog posts here.
Aleynikov Case Continued Again
Posted on December 17, 2009Yes, I am sounding like a broken record. Here is the lastest from the wrongful prosecution of Sergey Aleynikov: 12/16/200916 AFFIRMATION of Joseph P. Facciponti in Support by USA requesting a 30-day continuance from 12/16/09 to 1/15/10 as to Sergey Aleynikov (aba) (Entered: 12/17/2009) 12/16/2009 ORDER TO CONTINUE IN THE INTEREST OF JUSTICE as to Sergey Aleynikov re: 6 Order...
Sex Offender Laws Ruin Another Life
Posted on December 16, 2009A 17-year old who had sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend isn't going to have much of a life.
Aleynikov Hearing Today (12.16.2009)
Posted on December 16, 2009What happened? There are rumors of a plea agreement. I hope Sergey refuses to plead guilty, since there is no way that he could be convicted at trial. More details once they are available.
The Children Never Grew Up
Posted on December 15, 2009Adults - fully grown men and women - were shocked (not in the Casablanca sense of shocked; but really, truly, actually shocked) to learn that professional baseball players used steroids. How very sad. Not that athletes are using steroids; but that this was a surprise...
Bill of Rights Day
Posted on December 15, 2009Happy Bill of Rights day, from the Cato Institute's always-thoughtful Tim Lynch.
What is Real?
Posted on December 15, 2009My lengthy rejoinder to this post about a female who blogged under a man's name went poof into the Internet. In sum: Bernie Madoff was as real as it gets. He wasn't anonymous. He had credibility. It was all illusion. Once you realize that most of life is an illusion, and that nearly everything you've learned is a life, you...
Prosecuting a Judge
Posted on December 15, 2009An very interesting case in Harris County, Texas, is being live-Twittered by Mark Bennett. Here are some details. The Twittering is hard to follow, since the posts are in reverse chronological order. If you're game, go here.
Barack Obama Should Run for President of the United States
Posted on December 14, 2009Barack Obama has been blogging about his outrage over the bailouts, and Wall Street corruption. Imagine if he were the most powerful man in America. Imagine if he had the power to appoint the Secretary of the Treasury. Imagine if he had the power to lobby Congress for Wall Street form legislation...
See a Narcissist Parent
Posted on December 13, 2009What is wrong with Emily Bazelon? My boys love astronomy. I couldn't care less. This leaves me with a guilty question: What do you do when your children's interests don't match your own? Do you do your utmost to cultivate genuine enthusiasm and expertise? Do you fake it? Or do you keep the faith with your own passions, figuring you're...
Congress and White House Address Debt Slaves
Posted on December 11, 2009When banks made ruinous financial bets, they will be bailed out. They will pay record bonuses with taxpayer money. When, you, the average American, makes a bat bet on your house: Hit the streets. Democratic leaders failed to revive legislation that would let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgages to lower homeowners' monthly payments...
District Attorney's Son Avoids Harsh Prison Sentence for Three Homicides (Diana Gomez, Larry Morse II, Judge Kenneth Gnoss)
Posted on December 11, 2009What is the likely prison sentence a California drunk driver who killed three people would receive? Here are the facts: Dylan Morse had a blood-alcohol level of at least 0.15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit for an adult, and had marijuana in his system when he ran a red light at Stony Point Road and Highway 116, where he...
What Does a Debt Slave Look Like?
Posted on December 11, 2009People, for years, treated a home like it was an investment. Except that their were brainwashed into not treating a home like an investment. Consider this.... You start a new business. You finance it. Your business fails. You plead bankruptcy. You move on...
The Perils of Elitism
Posted on December 11, 2009The American Prospect is an extremely liberal publication with an extremely liberal readership. It's the National Review for liberals. Recently, Matt Taibbi wrote an article for Rolling Stone Magazine, wherein Taibbi critized Barack Obama's handling of the economic crisis...
Seven Foods Experts Won't Eat
Posted on December 10, 2009This is an incredible article. Food makers are feeding you poison. Yet another reason to live one's life by this mantra: Don't look at what people say; look at what they do. Some of the experts do have a conflict of interest. How persuasive is it that an organic potato guy would tell you to eat organic potatoes? Meh...
How You Are Making Bankers Billions
Posted on December 10, 2009Explaining the bailouts has just been made easier. In a brilliant post, Henry Blodget explains how you the American taxpayer are making Wall Street billions for doing nothing: Raise $1 billion of equity. Borrow $9 billion from the Fed at an annual cost of 0...
Narcissism v. Individualism
Posted on December 09, 2009Probably the most influential essay I ever read was Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self Reliance." One who understands this understands life: "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion []...
Washington Post as Wall Street Propoganda Machine
Posted on December 08, 2009Last weekend the Washington Post attempted to reform Neel Kashkari's image. Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was Henry Paulson's right-hand man during the bailouts. Kashkari helped redistribute hundreds-of-billions of dollars from those who needed it most, to those who needed it least...
Science, Steroids, and Climategate
Posted on December 08, 2009Relax, this is not another post about Climategate ? which means it?s a post that has everything to do with Climategate. §§§ Myths are always propagated by those who wish to remain in power. Wizards wear robes. Scientists wear lab coats. Today?s truths are tomorrow?s myths...
Best Buy Late Payment Scam
Posted on December 02, 2009Why haven't corporations like Best Buy and HSBC been indicted for fraud?
Is Calling Someone a "Snitch" Defamatory?
Posted on December 01, 2009A very cute case from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Michtavi v. New York Daily News (here).
Bradley Johnson, Seattle Spam Lawyer
Posted on December 01, 2009One of the more obnoxious aspects of blogging is comment spam. Usually comment spammers are promoting Viagra or online gambling. Lawyers like Bradley Johnson have fallen to the lowest common denominator, littering legal blogs with spam. Back in September, someone promoting Seattle attorney Bradley Johnson left a spam comment at Popehat...
Celebrity or Community?
Posted on November 30, 2009What the Tiger Woods situation should mean to you:
Tiger Woods and Tyranny
Posted on November 29, 2009If Tiger Woods died today, would you be able to pay your mortgage? Would your kids still wake up? Would your dog still love you? Why care about Tiger Woods? We care about Tiger Woods because they want us to. Think about how many people are F5'ing the Drudge Report to see what's new with Tiger (we're all on a...
Cognitive Bias and Climategate
Posted on November 29, 2009Did a whistle blower reveal hidden documents to the public; or was a hacker responsible? If your answer is, "That's a stupid question," then you are likely free of mind control. If the question makes sense to you, you're brain has been through too many spin cycles...
Credit Cards and Cognitive Bias
Posted on November 24, 2009Tonight PBS's Frontline will air a fascinating article on how credit card companies manipulate consumers into bad deals. Some of the stuff is illegal, although some perfectly legal tactics rely on cognitive biases like optimism bias: "I used to use the word 'penalty pricing' or 'stealth pricing,'" [a credit card exec...
How Old is 15?
Posted on November 24, 2009Great points from Dave Chappelle. Under the law of many states, a 17-year old is unable to consent to sex with her 18-year old boyfriend. In those same states, a 15-year old can be tried as an adult. If a person lacks the ability to understand the nature of sex, how can a person understand the nature of criminal acts?...
Law, Image, and Entitlement
Posted on November 23, 2009"The definition of a narcissist is one who creates an identity and prizes it above all other things." Defining one's self in light of one's job is symptomatic of narcissists, and is common in lawyers. As if italicizing one's profession were not enough ("I'm a lawyer"), lawyers must create a stronger bulwark by calling everyone else non-lawyers...
Kurt Greenbaum, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporter, is a Fraud and Hypocrite
Posted on November 19, 2009Kurt Greenbaum, a director of social media for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has answered an important question. Namely: "What happens when someone that knows very little about social media gets a job as a director of social media?" In answering the question, Greenbaum reveals himself as unethical and hypocritical...
Warren Buffett is No Folk Hero
Posted on November 17, 2009Years ago Tom Kirkendall had an insight that no one had before - or since, it seems - about Warren Buffett. Called "The Buffett Rule," Kirkendall explained the media's reporting of Buffett thusly: "A folksy and media savvy businessman involved in complicated structured finance transactions is given a pass [when others go to jail and receive negative press for the...
Using Google for Legal Research
Posted on November 17, 2009I begin every legal research issue the same way - with Google. Using Google just got better: As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases...
Deferred Prosecution for Aleynikov?
Posted on November 16, 2009In like a lion, out like a lamb: In a court filing on Monday, federal prosecutors revealed that Aleynikov's attorney plans to seek a resolution of the case that could culminate in either a deferred prosecution agreement, or a plea to a reduced charge of a misdemeanor...
Facebook Saves Teen from Confirmation Bias and Flawed Eyewitness Identification
Posted on November 15, 2009We got a black kid who was already in jail for armed robbery. Therefore, he must be guilty of an unrelated armed robbery. Oh, and we have an eyewitness identification. Let's send him to prison! Oops: For 19-year-old Rodney Bradford, a simple Facebook status update turned into much more: a rock-solid alibi after he was accused of a crime...
See a Narcissist Parent
Posted on November 15, 2009Do check out this insightful post and fascinating comment thread. "Sparkylong" serves as the voice of insight and reason. "Turk" plays the role of narcissistic father. The post and thread reminded me of a brilliant insight from The Last Psychiatrist: "[Today's parents] secretly read their kid's email and MySpace accounts, but have never once read the kid's math book...
Is it Legal for Lawyers to Use GPS Tracking?
Posted on November 15, 2009Tracy J. Hasper and Gordon F. Lull, both of Batza & Associates Inc., have this lengthy and interesting article discussing the legal issues of GPS tracking. Check it out (.pdf).
Obama Gives $33 Billion to Home Builders
Posted on November 14, 2009Rarely does news shock me. The corruption is so thick...How can one be surprised? Barack Obama has given us a reason to sit in awe: ON Nov. 6, President Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 into law, extending unemployment benefits by 20 weeks and renewing the first-time homebuyer tax credit until next April...
Judge Manuel Real at it Again
Posted on November 13, 2009What does it say about the judiciary's ability to self-police when Judge Manuel Real is still on the bench? A federal appeals court today criticized U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real for his handling of $33.8 million entrusted to him for victims of late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, calling his accounting ?curious? and ?filled with cryptic notations? that failed to...
Aleynikov Hearing on Monday: Facciponti's Unanswered Questions
Posted on November 12, 2009Will AUSA Joseph Paul Facciponti indict Aleynikov - who was arrested less than 48 hours after Goldman Sachs reported him for alleging stealing trade secrets? (When Goldman calls: Arrest first, investigate later.) Or will Facciponti ask for another 30-day continuance? When is a federal judge going to stand up to Facciponti? Facciponti already lied in federal court...
Veteran's Day is a Time for Narcissism
Posted on November 11, 2009"Oh, thank you so much soldiers for serving and risking your lives. Yes, thank you. Oh, sure, I haven't written a single check this year to any veteran's-related charity. I care, though, dammit! I support the troops!" Yes, indeed, you do care. You care about how people perceive you...
Bear Stearns Not Guilty
Posted on November 10, 2009The two former Bear Stearn fund managers have been found not guilty. Details here. That is unsurprising. The prosecution against them was frivolous, for reasons I discussed in this post.
Sometimes It's Better Not to Appeal
Posted on November 10, 2009In the federal courts, court-appointed lawyers in complex cases must have their fee requests judicially approved. Spokane lawyer Gerald R. Smith requested a large fee request for a court-appointed case - over $46,000. The trial court hinted that Mr. Smith's performance was not worthy of $46,000: [T]he Honorable Justin L...
Speciesism and the Death Penalty
Posted on November 09, 2009Is it intellectually consistent for a death penalty abolitionist to feed her dog? There are those who claim that the death penalty is always wrong. It doesn't matter if the criminal tortured his victims for days before killing them. It doesn't even matter if the criminal enjoyed it...
Should Teenagers be Sentenced to Life Imprisonment?
Posted on November 09, 2009The Supreme Court will soon decide whether its constitutional to sentence juveniles to prison for life, for crimes less than murder. Scott Greenfield thinks that constitutional issues aside: LWOP for kids at all, no less for crimes short of murder, is just nuts...
Prosecutors Should Feel the Chill
Posted on November 06, 2009Sometimes someone says something so crisp that one can only feel awe and jealousy. Justice Sotomayor put me and everyone else to shame during oral arguments in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee. §§§ During the oral arguments in Pottawattamie, Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito and Breyer kept niggling over the alleged ?chilling effect? that allowing a lawsuit to proceed against...
A Human-Sized Duffel Bag
Posted on November 06, 2009I laughed out loud at this: [The defendant] challenges a number of the district court?s factual findings and argues the findings do not establish that officers lawfully conducted a protective sweep of the garage during which they observed an open duffel bag containing marijuana...
Federal Judges Demand DOJ Reform Discovery Practices
Posted on November 06, 2009Federal judges are standing up to the United States Department of Justice: Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia says he's "radicalized" when it comes to prosecution disclosure obligations. He is a proponent of a federal rule that clearly spells out the government's obligation to turn over favorable evidence to defense lawyers...
Catholicism Succumbs to the Culture of Narcissism
Posted on November 05, 2009Section 1983 Blog has a post about Catholic League v. City and County of San Francisco, a frivolous case in our frivolous times. In Catholic League, the Catholic Church sued because the City of San Francisco hurt Catholics' feelings. Suing for hurt feelings is only more evidence of our culture of narcissism...
Class Action Lawsuit Against Whole Foods for Not Honoring Volume and Case Discounts
Posted on September 30, 2009One of the most frustrating facts of modern life: You can't trust corporations. I monitor my credit card statement monthly. I cancelled a gym membership with Gold's Gym months ago. Each month, they bill me. Each month, I dispute the charges. In America, a person must have two jobs...
Pottawattamie County and Racial Justice
Posted on September 30, 2009We've discussed the legal issues raised in Pottawattamie County extensively. In a recent amicus brief, Mark Herrmann, on behalf of Black Cops Against Police Brutality, looks at the case from a different angle. In a blog posting about Pottawattamie County, Herrmann highlights the racial issues that we've ignored: Two white prosecutors participated in fabricating, and then presenting at trial, perjurious...
EMT Firefighter Punks Neo-Nazi
Posted on September 30, 2009Too good to not be true: I was called to respond to a medical emergency involving a man who was covered in Nazi tattoos. He had high blood sugar, and was drunk and pretty out of it. We had to take him to the hospital. On the way there, I kept telling him he needed a blood transfusion; and this...
Catholic Church Defends Roman Polanski
Posted on September 29, 2009The Catholic Church wants us to move past its child molestation scandal, because, quite frankly, priests were not molesting children. Instead, ala Roman Polanski, they were simply having relations with adolescents (via): The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males...
1-877-362-2803 is a Scam. Is Acxiom Corporation-Delivery.Net a Criminal Enterprise?
Posted on September 28, 2009On Sunday afternoon, I received the following alert: "smsbanking@t-mobile.delivery.net: Message from [Name of my Bank]. Not a sales message. Call us at 1-877-363-2803 immediately about your recent account activity. Thank you." I was startled, but knew not to call...
Oklahoma City Bombing Tapes Edited
Posted on September 28, 2009What is going on here? OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday...
PATRIOT Act Used for Non-Terrorism Cases
Posted on September 28, 2009The PATRIOT Act stands for: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. As it turns out, the PATRIOT Act isn't about terrorism at all: In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people's homes without their permission or knowledge so...
Paul Clement to Argue Pottawattamie County v. McGhee?
Posted on September 27, 2009In the Pottawattame County merits brief (here), Paul Clement is listed as counsel of record. Is Clement doing the oral argument? It will be much better for everyone if a former Solicitor General argues the case. Incidentally, the merits brief disposes of the argument that adequate alternative remedies against prosecutorial misconduct exist: Petitioners? amici describe a host of other remedies...
No Charges in Hofstra Rape Hoax
Posted on September 27, 2009The young woman whose false accusation led to jail time for 5 innocent men, will not face responsibility for her actions.
New York Times in Denail About ACORN Story
Posted on September 27, 2009Some people are so much superior that, when they gaze at their own navels, they abs where there is only lint and flab. And so goes the New York Times missing the target. A week or so ago, a story about ACORN's corruption broke. Why wasn't the newspaper of record on this story? Does ?media bias? explain the inattention? The...
Consciousness of Guilt; Consciousness of Innocence
Posted on September 26, 2009In most states, a person facing criminal charges who flees the jurisdiction will be hit at trial. The jury will be instructed that it can infer guilt based on the defendant?s flight. The concept is known as flight as evidence of consciousness of guilt...
What is Criminal Practice Like?
Posted on September 26, 2009Two heartfelt and thoughtful posts: Norm Pattis on a favorable verdict that still feels like a loss. Jeff Gamso on the death of a client.
Sudafed is a Crime
Posted on September 26, 2009Often people like me seem unreasonable. We fought efforts to make purchasing Sudafed a crime. Yes, Sudafed contains pseudoephedrine. Yes, pseudoephedrine can be used to manufacture meth. However, it's also the case that there are moronic police and prosecutors...
Free Speech for the Corporatocracy
Posted on September 25, 2009The answer to speech is more speech, libertarians will utter. So you're really going to outspend the GM Corporation? Goldman Sachs? If the Supreme Court gives corporations the same rights as people, then we can consider the latest bailouts a quasi-bailout, perhaps even the Diet Coke of bailouts...
Why I'm Not a Libertarian
Posted on September 25, 2009Libertarians will say, "But that's not libertarianism, Mike!" That response parallels communists who say, "But China isn't real communism! Russia wasn't pure communism!" The bailouts should have been 9/11 for libertarianism. We libertarians were duped...
Summary of ACORN Lawsuit
Posted on September 24, 2009Here is a post that I am jealous of, for not having written.
Links (9.24.09)
Posted on September 24, 2009"Pottawamie and the Shaking Prosecutor Syndrome" "What Are the Medical Ethics of Forced Catheterization?" "Thursday on Men?s Rights" "Inverse Preemption: Does California's Anti-SLAPP Statute Preempt Section 1983?" "Cutting Budgets, Scaring People"
Opinion Writing (2nd Edition) by Ruggero J. Aldisert
Posted on September 24, 2009Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert, author of the excellent Logic for Lawyers, recently updated his book on judicial opinion writing. I've just ordered a copy, which I'll review once it's read. Why should lawyers read a book on opinion writing? Some judges - unlike Richard Posner - actually try applying the law when writing an opinion...
Prosecutors Can't Lie: They are "Truthful, but Inaccurate"
Posted on September 23, 2009Remember Rachel Cannon, the federal prosecutor who lied to U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow? She has issued her apologia, and she ain't no Socrates: The prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office on Sept. 18 filed a motion for reconsideration in the case, telling U...
Pottawattamie County v. McGhee: DOJ's Amicus Brief
Posted on September 23, 2009The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee. In McGhee, the issue is this: Should prosecutors who fabricate evidence, leading to a wrongful conviction, be absolutely immune from suit? Absolute immunity from suit means that a wrongfully convicted person may not sue - at all or under any circumstances...
NEA Violates the Law, White House Offers Creative Solution
Posted on September 22, 2009The National Endowment for the Arts is a federal agency that funds a lot of really bad "art." The kind of stuff I could produce. Someone said it best, "I can't define art. I will say this: If I can do it, it ain't art." True dat playa. In any event the NEA is in trouble (well, it's not; but...
Real Life Date Rape Case
Posted on September 22, 2009The Hofstra Rape Hoax has people talking about date-rape all over again. Emily Bazelon has some interesting commentary here. Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse have some great comments here. Let's not dwell on the abstract; let's look at the concrete. Let's examine a real-life date-rape case...
Zazi Terrorist Case
Posted on September 22, 2009Or, rather, "The Terrorist Case That Isn't." There's a must-read post on Zazi here.
Links: Annotated (9.21.2009)
Posted on September 21, 2009"Federal Reserve Accounts For 50% Of Q2 Treasury Purchases." In a Ponzi Scheme, new investors invest money. This new money is used to pay dividends to old investors. Every Ponzi Scheme eventually fails, because you will always run out of new investors...
AEDPA Habeas Deadlines
Posted on September 21, 2009The nastiest issue in habeas corpus proceedings is the deadlines. If someone questions me about a habeas petition, I immediately drop everything, and pray that we haven't missed a deadline. In comparison to deadlines, the con law stuff is easy. How closely do you need to read Crawford v...
Appeals Courts Should Improve the Public's Access to the Law: Here's How
Posted on September 21, 2009The law exists for the public. Why then do most Federal Courts of Appeal making finding the law more complicated than need be? Some Courts make it very hard for people to track developments in the law. Every Court of Appeal uploads recent decisions to its site...
Links: Annotated
Posted on September 19, 2009From the New York Review of Books, "The Torture Memos: The Case Against the Lawyers." Georgetown law professor David Cole discusses the Office of Legal Counsel's role in supporting torture. Cole's normative position is: "At its best, law is about seeking justice, regulating state power, respecting human dignity, and protecting the vulnerable...
Moral of the Hofstra Rape Hoax: Film It?
Posted on September 18, 2009Joye Brown has some interesting commentary about the Hofstra Rape Hoax. She saves her best point for last: 5. A cell phone video of a portion of the sexual activity was key to gaining the young woman's confession. If not for the video - taken by one of the woman's alleged sex partners - four young men could still be...
Hofstra Gang Rape Hoax, and Feminism's War Against Men
Posted on September 17, 2009Hofstra had its own Duke Lacrosse Case: The student who alleged she was gang raped by five men inside a Hofstra University dormitory bathroom on Sunday has admitted to making the entire story, the Nassau County District Attorney's office confirmed on Wednesday night...
Eyewitness Identification Remain Unreliable
Posted on September 16, 2009What is the leading cause of wrongful convictions? It's an easy answer: Unreliable eyewitness identification. Most of us think that most eyewitness testimony is reliable. Wanna bet your life on it? Associate Professor Dr Kimberley Wade from the Department of Psychology led an experiment to see whether exposure to fabricated footage of an event could induce individuals to accuse another...
Prosecutor Goes Underneath Her Robes: Verla Sue Holland and Attorney Tom O?Connell's Affair
Posted on September 16, 2009It's not often that you get an unethical prosecutor and a judge in the same case. Then again, we are talking about Texas: The question of whether a romantic relationship between a judge and prosecutor is unfair won?t be decided by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals...
Links: Annotated
Posted on September 16, 2009A Writer Rants About Pro Bono. Not quite; but the rationale is similar enough. How dare you not represent me for free? I often ask people for copies of tax returns. "You ever given any money to charity? Volunteer anywhere? Do you even give blood?" It's always those who have done the least for humanity who demand that lawyers represent...
Sergey Aleynikov Update
Posted on September 16, 2009The Aleynikov prosecution received more attention that DOJ was prepared for. DOJ is in a tough position - "tough" if you put personal interests ahead of your ethical and legal obligations, that is. If DOJ indicts Aleynikov, they won't obtain a conviction...
Federal Judges Taking Separation of Powers Seriously
Posted on September 16, 2009Contrary to popular prosecutorial belief, a federal judge's duties include more than, "Do what DOJ tells you to do." According to the Constitution, federal judges must serve as adversaries to prosecutors. Power must check power in our system of separated powers...
Eyewitness Identification Remains Unreliable
Posted on September 16, 2009What is the leading cause of wrongful convictions? It's an easy answer: Unreliable eyewitness identification. Most of us think that most eyewitness testimony is reliable. Wanna bet your life on it? Associate Professor Dr Kimberley Wade from the Department of Psychology led an experiment to see whether exposure to fabricated footage of an event could induce individuals to accuse another...
"Silberman Transcripts Remain Sealed, at Least for Now"
Posted on September 15, 2009I haven't followed the prosecution of Judge Harvey Silberman, and thus have no opinion about the merits of the case. Still, one's nose should itch when one judge refuses to make public, the accusations against another judge: The newly assigned judge hearing election-bribery charges against Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Harvey Silberman and two others declined to rule Friday on...
Overcriminalization Event at the Cato Institute
Posted on September 15, 2009The Cato Institute is holding a fun event on October 1st. If you're in the Washington D.C. area, check it out.
Pottawattamie County v. McGhee: Fabricating Evidence is All in a Day's Work
Posted on September 14, 2009In Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the Supreme Court will decide whether a prosecutor should be entitled to absolute immunity from suit for "obtaining, manufacturing, coercing and fabricating evidence before filing formal charges." Absolute immunity from suit, in the context of civil rights cases means this: Even if the prosecutor fabricated evidence, he may not be sued...
Judge Jed S. Rakoff Stands Firm: No Conspiracies in his Courtroom
Posted on September 14, 2009Last week Bank of America and the SEC conspired to trick Judge Jed S. Rakoff into approving a bogus settlement agreement. Today Judge Rakoff sent a message to the SEC: Stop lying to me; stop cheating the American public; stop cheating Bank of America shareholders...
Gamso - For the Defense
Posted on September 14, 2009This is a blog you will likely enjoy. UPDATE: Mark Bennett points out two other good ones: Kaiser Law Blog (a new one to me) and People v. State. Check them out, too.
"How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession"
Posted on September 14, 2009I feel like a babe in the woods. How, I wondered, could otherwise smart people like Tyler Cown kowtow to the same members of the Federal Reserve who failed to foresee the economic crisis? It made no sense. My error, I now realize, was assuming good faith on the part of the Fed's supporters...
Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
Posted on September 14, 2009This looks to be a very good book about the problems of overcriminalization. "Another overcriminalization book," you wonder. "Isn't the market saturated?" No; there will always be a shortage of good books. I skim all of the books on overcriminalization, and this one is legit...
Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (UPDATED)
Posted on September 14, 2009This looks to be a very good book about the problems of overcriminalization. "Another overcriminalization book," you wonder. "Isn't the market saturated?" No; there will always be a shortage of good books. I skim all of the books on overcriminalization, and this one is legit...
Lawyers and the First Amendment
Posted on September 13, 2009Two Pennsylvania judges sold children into slavery in the infamous Cash-4-Kids scam. By law, lawyers who appeared before those corrupt judges were not allowed to stop the human trafficking. Why do judges put self-interest above the public interest? Suspicious things happen in courtrooms across the country...
Prosecutorial Discretion in Action: Andrew Sullivan Skates on Marijuana Charge
Posted on September 12, 2009Prosecutors say they need a lot of discretion. Why? So that they can prosecute the powerless, while refusing to prosecute the powerful and connected? You think I'm some sort of wild-eyed Marxist? Hardly. Here's a typical case (via): Political commentator, author and writer for The Atlantic magazine Andrew M...
Sheldon Nahmod has a Blog
Posted on September 12, 2009The legal blogging world became much more interesting, now that Sheldon H. Nahmod, an expert on Section 1983 law, has begun blogging. In the "About" section to his page, Nahmod notes: "I plan to blog once or twice weekly on 42 U.S.C. section 1983, perhaps the most important federal civil rights statute, and on constitutional law (including the First Amendment),...
Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court
Posted on September 12, 2009Amy Bach has written a promising book entitled Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court. I haven't had time to review it myself, but Scott Greenfeld seems to be a fan. Do you need any further endorsement?
DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility: Protecting Their Own
Posted on September 11, 2009What are the odds that a federal prosecutor will be punished for prosecutorial misconduct? The odds are about 50-to-1 that a prosecutor who is reported for prosecutorial misconduct will not receive even a slap on the wrist. Given that most prosecutorial misconduct goes unreported, the odds of getting away with misconduct are even better...
Sergey Aleynikov Hearing on Sept 16, 2009
Posted on September 11, 2009The next hearing in U.S. v. Sergey Aleynikov, the most disgraceful criminal prosecution since the Duke Lacrosse Case, will be held this coming Wednesday. While we don't know whether the charges against Aleynikov will be dismissed, there has been a related development...
Andrew Sullivan's Drug Case Dismissal Approved by Highest Levels of DOJ
Posted on September 11, 2009As other media outlets have reported, famed blogger and Atlantic writer Andrew M. Sullivan was cited for possessing marijuana on federal property. That anyone would be prosecuted for possessing marijuana in the United States is itself sad. What is worse, however, is the special treatment Andrew Sullivan received...
DOJ Refuses to Prosecute Schlozman for Perjury
Posted on September 11, 2009Yesterday, in a post entitled, "DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility: Protecting Their Own," we argued that the United States Department of Justice does not take professional misconduct within its ranks seriously. Today, Attorney General Holder rubber-stamped our conclusion...
Prosecutorial Discretion in Action: Andrew Sullivan Skates on Marijuana Charge
Posted on September 11, 2009Prosecutors say they need a lot of discretion. Why? So that they can prosecute the powerless, while refusing to prosecute the powerful and connected? You think I'm some sort of wild-eyed Marxist? Hardly. Here's a typical case (via): Political commentator, author and writer for The Atlantic magazine Andrew M...
Pottawattamie County v. McGhee Amicus Brief: Prosecutors Spread Familiar Lies
Posted on September 10, 2009[Editor: In Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the most interesting Section 1983 this Term, the Supreme Court will determine whether a prosecutor who manufactured evidence should be held liable for money damages. An amicus brief, filed on behalf of state and federal prosecutors, is unpersuasive...
Pottawattamie County v. McGhee: Reversal Hurts
Posted on September 10, 2009[Editor: In Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the most interesting Section 1983 this Term, the Supreme Court will determine whether a prosecutor who manufactured evidence should be held liable for money damages. An amicus brief, filed on behalf of state and federal prosecutors, is unpersuasive...
Pottawattamie County v. McGhee Amicus Brief: Lawsuit Doublespeak
Posted on September 10, 2009[Editor: In Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the most interesting Section 1983 this Term, the Supreme Court will determine whether a prosecutor who manufactured evidence should be held liable for money damages. An amicus brief, filed on behalf of state and federal prosecutors, is unpersuasive...
Too Many Lawyers? The Free Market has a Solution
Posted on September 10, 2009Having too many lawyers is not just bad for society: It is bad for the lawyers. Too many lawyers means too few jobs. Life is tough out there for nearly every recent law school graduate. Many people have offered many solutions. Most of these solutions are paternalistic...
"Judge Richard S. Arnold: A Legacy of Justice on the Federal Bench"
Posted on September 09, 2009The Eighth Circuit Bar Association is hosting an event to discuss a new book about Judge Richard S. Arnold. If you're in St. Louis, you should go. Details here. I didn't even know the book was out. I made an exception to my boycott of new books to order my copy...
The NYTPicker
Posted on September 09, 2009Media bias discussions are frustrating. The ones who mention media bias are right-wing goons. The Left has no problem with the Times. One cannot have an interesting discussion with fools. There is no doubt that the New York Times is incredibly biased...
SEC and BOA Conspire to Trick Judge Rakoff
Posted on September 09, 2009When two people pretend to be adversaries to commit fraud on a federal judge, a problem emerges: Keeping a bunch of lawyers "on message" ain't easy. The SEC and Bank of America lawyers are going to learn this lesson, as Judge Jed S. Rakoff is not going to like their latest ruse...
Scalia's New Police Professionalism: Two Counter-Memes
Posted on September 08, 2009In Hudson v. Michigan, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the exclusionary rule was unnecessary because of "[a]nother development over the past half-century that deters civil-rights violations," namely, "the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline...
Al-Kidd v. Ashcroft and Material Witness Warrants
Posted on September 08, 2009There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the history, purpose, and actual law of the material witness statute, 18 U.S.C. 3144. In 2005, the Congressional Research Service published a characteristically helpful summary of the material witness statute: "Arrest and Detention of Material Witnesses:Federal Law In Brief and Section 12 of the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act...
Southern Justice
Posted on September 06, 2009Fire chief shot by police for complaining, in open court, about excessive ticketing.
On Vacation: Reading, Not Writing
Posted on September 04, 2009Norm Pattis peeks behind the curtain. Three parts: I, II, III. Lots of drama and name calling in the comments. Anonymous people call other anonymous people cowards for being anonymous. Lawyers claim that tax records and lease agreements don't mean anything...
"Chasing Small Fry, S.E.C. Let Madoff Get Away"
Posted on September 03, 2009The modern American prosecutorial novella has a simple theme. Federal prosecutors ignore rich and powerful people like Bernie Madoff. Instead, they prosecute small targets. This June, 2009 New York Times article is typical: Three months ago, in a courtroom in Bridgeport, Conn...
Prosecutorial Misconduct in the United States Department of Justice
Posted on September 02, 2009In 2009 alone, federal judges have identified several cases of prosecutorial misconduct. All of these prosecutors are still serving with the Department of Justice: Sean Cronin Rachel Cannon Adam Reeves Juliet Sorensen Brenda Morris William Welch II Karen Ann Escobar Suzanne Sullivan Andrea Hoffman Again, that is from 2009 alone...
American Bar Association Issues New Guidelines on Prosecutorial Ethics
Posted on September 02, 2009The American Bar Associate recently issued an important opinion expanding a prosecutor's ethical duties. Significantly, the ABA has interpreted the Rules of Professional Conduct to be more demanding than constitutional requirements under Brady v. Maryland...
"Prosecutors Run Amok"
Posted on September 02, 2009Kathleen Ridolfi has a must-read column in the Daily Journal (subscription only) about prosecutorial misconduct. This statistic should make everyone queasy: I was a contributor to a recent study published by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice that detailed how California appellate courts found prosecutors committed misconduct in 444 cases...
Judge Stephen Reinhardt's Footnote Five
Posted on September 02, 2009Today in a fascinating criminal case, Judge Stephen Reinhardt inserted an interesting footnote into his concurring opinion. After critizing the Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court for making up the defintions of words - i.e., engaging in judicial activism - in order to affirm criminal convictions, he wrote: Other ways, of course, [to earn more public trust and respect than we...
The Perils of Good Lawyering
Posted on September 02, 2009This is the second time my friend's life has been in real danger.
Journalist has Proof that Paulson Lied to Congress about TARP
Posted on September 02, 2009Former Treasury Secretary Henry Pauslon requested $700 billion from Congress. He told Congress that he intended to use the money to buy mortgage-backed securities. Five days after he recieved the $700 billion, he used it to pay billions to Goldman Sachs via AIG...
Keeping the Heat on Sean Cronin
Posted on September 01, 2009John Pacenti, I like your style: Where in the world is federal prosecutor Sean Cronin? Those in the know are certainly not offering the whereabouts of the Miami Assistant U.S. Attorney at the center of a prosecutorial misconduct investigation. The Miami U...
"Dog Days Turn Deadly in America's Prisons"
Posted on September 01, 2009Mother Jones has this disturbing article about prison conditions: The summer of 2009 hadn't even begun when Marcia Powell, a 48-year old inmate at Arizona?s Perryville Prison, was baked to death. Powell, whom court records show had a history of schizophrenia, substance abuse, and mild mental retardation, was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution...
Section 1983 Blog: Blog Spin-off
Posted on August 31, 2009We're spinning a blog off. All of Crime & Federalism's Section 1983-related posts are going to be posted to a new blog, creatively entitled: Section 1983 Blog. That blog will provide serious legal analysis only. It will be more technical than our postings here...
Prosecutorial Misconduct and the Problems of the Middle Class
Posted on August 30, 2009The Zhenli Ye Gon case was dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct. (Details here.) How was the misconduct discovered? Zhenli Ye Gon was a rich drug dealer whom federal prosecutors deemed unworthy of a fair trial. And so prosecutors hid evidence. Fortunately for Ye Gon, he was able to pay lawyers to work tirelessly on his case...
Rachel Cannon, AUSA, is an Unethical Prosecutor
Posted on August 28, 2009Another day, another unethical federal prosecutor: A federal judge has found that a prosecutor in U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald's office committed prosecutorial misconduct by allowing a government witness to testify falsely in a drug conspiracy trial that resulted in the convictions of four defendants in March...
District Attorney David Paulson Found Liable for Retaliation
Posted on August 28, 2009This is an interesting jury verdict: Solano County, Calif., District Attorney David Paulson retaliated against a bail bondsman who slammed the prosecutor in a newspaper ad, a federal court jury decided Wednesday. Paulson and his chief investigator, Al Garza, acted with malice when they sought a temporary restraining order against Joel Thomas "Tom" Toler and then unsuccessfully pursued charges that...
Mike Tyson Talks About Prison
Posted on August 27, 2009This is part of an older series of videos with one of the most interesting men to ever live, Mike Tyson. The video will autoplay at 3:20 (where Mr. Tyson discusses his time in prison):
Barack Obama Gives Kickback to George Soros
Posted on August 27, 2009On August 15, 2008, Bloomberg repoted: Billionaire investor George Soros bought an $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro SA in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund's largest holding. On August 19, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported: Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling You read that headline correctly...
A First Amendment Right to Receive Campaign Contributions?
Posted on August 27, 2009Dean v. Blumenthal (2d Cir.; here) held that if there is a right to receive campaign contribution, the right is not clearly established. Very interesting case.
Qualified Immunity: Reasonably Believed that it was Reasonable?
Posted on August 27, 2009The always excellent "Wait a Second" blog has a post on qualified immunity. It's "inside baseball" sure to give you a headache if you're not versed in the controversy over whether qualified immunity gives an officer two chances to show reasonableness...
Sherlock Holmes Flips an Uncooperative Witness
Posted on August 26, 2009In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," Sherlock Holmes discovers that a stolen gem had been hidden inside the carcass of a goose. In order to uncover the thief, Holmes had to learn who sold the goose to the butcher. The butcher was unwilling to answer Holmes question...
Was Cameron Todd Willingham the First Innocent Man to be Executed?
Posted on August 26, 2009I don't know enough about the case to have an opinion. This American Statesman article is troubling: The fatal house fire that led Texas to execute Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 was erroneously ruled to be arson by fire investigators who relied on bad science, unproven theories and personal bias, a state-funded analysis concludes...
William D. Cohan is on Goldman Sachs' Payroll
Posted on August 26, 2009William D. Cohan wrote a puff-piece about Goldman Sachs in the most recent issue of Time. The end of the article describes Cohan thusly: "Cohan, a contributing editor at FORTUNE, is the author, most recently, of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street...
A Fun Kindle 2 Experiment
Posted on August 26, 2009I recently received my Kindle 2. I thought of a lovely experiment you should consider trying. Many books are available for free download on the Kindle 2. These books are free because their copyrights have expired. They are, in a word, old. For the next 30 days, I am not going to purchase any books...
Prosecutorial Misconduct in Zhenli Ye Gon Drug Case?
Posted on August 25, 2009Zhenli Ye Gon is a Chinese-born, Mexican businessman who allegedly sold materials he knew would be used to manufacture methamphetamine in the United States. The United States Departe of Justice filed a complaint against Ye Gon in June, 2007. Ye Gon was arrested in July, 2007...
Prosecutors Seek Mulligan in Zhenli Ye Gon Prosecution
Posted on August 25, 2009Imagine you're a federal prosecutor. You do not like the law that requires you to turn over evidence in your possession that is favorable to the defense - so called Brady material. You devise an ingenius scheme. You won't hand over any Brady material...
How Goldman Sachs Helps Clients Manipulate Stock Market
Posted on August 24, 2009One of Goldman Sachs' business is in issuing analysts reports. These reports often move the stock market. Unfortunately, many people take these reports at face value. Chumps buy-and-sell based on publicly-released reports. Goldman has found a way to cash in on their market-moving reports...
Aleynikov Arrest Contradcited Formal DOJ Policy
Posted on August 24, 2009Sergey Aleynikov was arrested for theft of trade secrets, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1832. The United States Attorneys Manual is an internal document that "contains general policies and some procedures" regarding the prosecution of federal crimes. Here is what the United States Attorney Manual has to say about arresting people for theft of trade secrets: Economic Espionage Act of...
New York Times Reports on Aleynikov Arrest
Posted on August 24, 2009Alex Berenson of the New York Times is asking the right questions about the arrest of Sergey Aleynikov. Check out his Times report here.
Was Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi Innocent?
Posted on August 23, 2009Americans who suckle soma-laced milk from the American Press' teat are outraged that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi has been released to Libya. Yet it seems that he should have been released: There were question marks too over Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who was the only man to identify Megrahi...
Gays or Goldman Sachs?
Posted on August 23, 2009Someone e-mailed to tell me I'm obsessed with Goldman Sachs. Yes, I am. Why aren't you? Is there an issue more important to America's future? They have stolen trillions from you. Your children will not, for the first generation in centuries, lead a better life than you have...
"Wall Street profits from trades with Fed"
Posted on August 23, 2009There is currently a proposal that would require Congress to audit the Federal Reserve. The bill has 282 co-sponsors, which means it would easily pass the House. Yet someone in the House has buried the bill. The Fed, of course, does not want audited. Although the Fed gave hundreds-of-billions of money directly to Wall Street, the Fed has actually transfered...
Libertarian Morality
Posted on August 22, 2009Credit card reform legislation was passed. I applaud it. Todd Zywicki is upset. Why? He's upset because the poor and igorant will no longer subsidize our credit cards. Yes, really. The smart and well-to-do have been taking advantage of the poor and ignorant...
Todd Zywicki Supported Subprime Lending
Posted on August 22, 2009"[T]he growth in subprime lending is not creating overwhelming debt burdens for low-income households." -- Todd Zywicki. Over the years, Todd Zywicki has made highly suspicious arguments regarding consumer lending and consumer behavior. The usual theme: Banks should be able to do whatever they like, because this benefits the poor...
The Elitism Bias/In-Group Bias
Posted on August 21, 2009The financial crisis has given us insight into a blindness bias that affects the elite. Ask yourself: How furious were you to learn the details of the bail outs? Unless you're reading this blog from a Goldman Sachs network, you were likely outraged. How is it, then, that even progessives like Barack Obama were unable to anticipate the populist outrage?...
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's Lies About AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs
Posted on August 21, 2009There are a lot of questions we all should have about the bailouts: Why was Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs' main competitor, not bailed out? Why did the Fed give AIG $85 billion, of which $13 billion went to Goldman Sachs? Chairman Bernanke, in a speech given today, claimed: The case of the investment bank Lehman Brothers proved exceptionally difficult, however...
Admiring Judge Richard Sullivan (UPDATED)
Posted on August 21, 2009The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has a post criticizing Judge Richard Sullivan: "To Lawyers Who Represent Cooperators: Fear Judge Richard Sullivan." The Journal blogger seems upset that a judge actually takes seriously the judicial function. The United States Constitution was founded up on separation of powers...
Barack Obama is a Holocaust Denier
Posted on August 20, 2009President Barack Obama made a campaign promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This is what Obama said: I also share with Armenian Americans ? so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors - a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide...
Winston Smith in a Robe: Judge Tells Lexis and Westlaw to Delete Court Opinion
Posted on August 19, 2009If you don't like the case, the case never existed: Ordinarily, the decision to settle a case while an appeal is pending means giving up the opportunity to set a legal precedent as well as forgoing the chance to win a reversal of any unfavorable published decisions handed down by the lower court...
Kozinki's Opening Line, and a Fun Pop Quiz
Posted on August 19, 2009United States v. Rex Harrison: "Everyone could have done more to protect defendant?srights at trial." I want to read more. Don't you? The opinion is here. Before you read it, guess it you can tell how the case came out. It was a criminal case: Opinion by Chief Judge Kozinski; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Bybee See if...
"Innocent Man Freed, But Shabby Prosecutor Still Works as Judge"
Posted on August 19, 2009Radley Balko has this report.
G. Paul Howes, Former Prosecutor, Bribed Witnesses
Posted on August 19, 2009It's happening. The Ted Stevens case will mark a historical turning point on the discipline of prosecutors. I have been following these issues for almost a decade. There has been more attention on prosecutorial misconduct over the past 12 months than in the past decade...
Peter Schiff for Senate?
Posted on August 19, 2009It seems that Peter Schiff is going to run against Chris Dodd. Damn; I might be taking a sabbatical to Connecticut. If he's a viable candidate, is there even a choice? At some point staring at a computer screen isn't enough activity for a moral agent.
Clint Eastwood's Behavioral Economics Approach to UBS Tax Cheats
Posted on August 19, 2009The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has an insightful post on the proposed settlement between the United States and Swiss government. So, at long last, as we blogged earlier, we?ve got an end result in this UBS tax situation. The final piece of the settlement, put into effect last week, was announced earlier Wednesday...
Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Reeves is an Unethical Prosecutor
Posted on August 18, 2009Adam Reeves is the latest edition to the Prosecutorial Misconduct Wall of Shame: The record demonstrates that the prosecution [Adam Reeves] argued to the jury material facts that the prosecution knew were false, or at the very least had strong reason to doubt...
Domestic Violence Victim's Section 1983 Lawsuit May Proceed to Trial, Second Circuit Holds
Posted on August 18, 2009Okin v. Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson, No. 06-5142 (2d Cir. Aug. 18, 2009) (here). A woman?s husband, Roy Sears, was a hometown hero. He owned a bar where the cops got drunk and watched sports. The police department gave the bar owner a license to beat up his live-in girlfriend...
Stress and the Brain
Posted on August 18, 2009One of the recent - and very silly myths - to die is that the brain is a fixed piece of meat: Your moronic teachers no doubt told you not to "kill brain cells." Instead, the brain is flexible - neuroplasticity is the buzzword, and The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force is a good...
"Scalia's Constitution" Has No Moral Authority
Posted on August 17, 2009Scalia has once again revealed himself to be a tyrant and a sociopath. Today Justice Antonin Scalia implied that, under the United States Constitution, an innocent person can be killed by the state. In In Re Troy Anthony Davis, Justices Scalia and Thomas stated: This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who...
RECAP to Make PACER Free?
Posted on August 17, 2009I'll never understand the whining over PACER's fees. Computers and servers cost money, and the fees for PACER rarely even hit my radar. Still, it is obnoxious that I've had to pay an entire sixteen cents thrice today after having run the same search for the Aleynikov case...
Update on Sergey Aleynikov Case (UPDATED)
Posted on August 17, 2009Today there was a hearing scheduled in United States v. Aleynikov. I haven't seen any reports of today's hearing. The docket sheet for PACER isn't showing any updates. (See update, below.) Bloomberg, however, is reporting: Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc...
Judge Manuel L. Real: Judicial Self-Regulation Fail
Posted on August 16, 2009The Los Angeles Times has this lengthy expose on federal judge Manuel L. Real. Real has been terrorizing litigants and lawyers for decades. He's a disagrace. He's still on the bench. If other judges can't can't do something about this guy, then what does that say about judicial self-regulation? Best paragraph: The Judicial Council of the U...
Shaming Sanction
Posted on August 16, 2009How do you maintain order without throwing people into prison? What if you can't catch a person breaking the law? What if a person is doing something that might not be illegal, but that is ruining someone else's life? The city of Peoria, Illinois, has found a genius solution...
Assistant United States Jason M. Ferguson is Shady
Posted on August 13, 2009This is some shady stuff. A criminal defense lawyer is accused of money laundering. The lawyer allegedly accepted what he knew was "dirty" money for payment of legal fees. The United States Attorneys Office for Middle District of Georgia has been recused from prosecuting the defense attorney...
What is a "Criminal Case" Under Chavez v. Martinez: Section 1983 Lawsuits for Violation of the Self-Incrimination Clause
Posted on August 13, 2009I had an longer post but my computer crashed, and I need to return to work. Here is what you need to know. Today the Ninth Circuit held in Stroot v. City of Everett: A coerced statement has been ?used? in a criminal case when it has been relied upon to file formal charges against the declarant, to determine judicially...
Blog Might Be Down: "I would like to learn how to spell Connecticut."
Posted on August 12, 2009In Small Time Crooks, Woody Allen's uneducated character bemoans: "I would like to learn how to spell Connecticut." Wise Woody was making a point: Isn't it comical to say we "want" to do something that we're capable of? Does it even make sense to refer to something you won't do, as a "want...
Second Circuit Civil Rights Blog
Posted on August 11, 2009"Wait a Second!" is a good blog. It covers Section 1983, ADA, and some criminal procedure. Lengthy entries; well reasoned case summaries. I like it. Check it out.
Corrupt SEC Younglings Enabled Bernie Madoff
Posted on August 11, 2009Every lawyer I know who litigates against the SEC uses the same cliche, "It's like taking candy from a baby, Mike." A new book discusses how SEC younglings treated Bernie Madoff: YOUNG, inexperienced government regulators were so wowed by Bernard Madoff's ritzy Midtown headquarters that they asked about job openings and dropped off resumes while missing clear evidence he was...
Alex Kozinski on Ethics and Henry Paulson
Posted on August 11, 2009In 2005, Alex Kozinski wrote a brilliant article in Legal Affairs on judicial ethics. He noted that current ethics laws are mostly trivial. A judge, e.g., must recuse himself when hearing a case involving a corporate client if the judge is a shareholder in the company...
So Much for Don't Blame the Victim: Ninth Circuit Validates Suicide-by-Cop
Posted on August 11, 2009The Recorder has the details.
Four Concentric Circles
Posted on August 11, 2009If you don't believe me, trace the outline of each circle with your mouse or finger. Our eyes don't deceive us, since our eyes only gather sensory data. It's our brains that do the processing. Everyone recognizes the validity of optical allusions; few recognize that our brains make similar mistakes when thinking about politics, policy, and personal problems.
Census to Count Illegal Immigrants, Giving Democrats More Seats in Congress
Posted on August 10, 2009Next year?s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents...
Henry Paulson Lied to Congress About AIG and Goldman Sachs
Posted on August 10, 2009Former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson testified before Congress about his role in the bailout of A.I.G. During his July 16, 2009 sword testimony, Paulson said: ?I want you to know that I had no role whatsoever in any of the Fed?s decision regarding payments to any of A...
Do Parents Have a Constitutional Right to Kill Children?
Posted on August 10, 2009Interesting case out of the Ninth. Too busy to blog now. Check it out: Detective Dale Rogers made a decision permitted by Idaho law to remove temporarily a sick infant from the custody of her parents in order to secure a medical diagnostic test and prophylactic treatment, procedures which pediatric doctors advised Rogers were both necessary and within the standard...
Eliot Spitzer Discusses AIG, Goldman Sachs, and Henry Paulson
Posted on August 10, 2009Henry Blodgett recently interviewed Eliot Spitzer. Here is one interesting excerpt:
Henry "Hank" Paulson's Federal Crimes
Posted on August 09, 2009Here is a great law school exam idea for a course in White Collar Crime. Dear Student, You are a young, knowledgeable, ethical federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. You take seriously your promise to provide equal justice under the law...
Hank Paulson and Goldman Sachs Are RICO Enterprises
Posted on August 09, 2009There is now no doubt that Henry Paulson and Goldman Sachs have committed numerous felonies. Paulson laundered several billion dollars of money through A.I.G. to Goldman Sachs. Paulson lied to Congress about the true nature of TARP. Paulson also violated the honest-service statute, which makes it a felony for a government official to breach his fidicuariy obligation to taxpayers: Paulson...
Paulson's Perjury
Posted on August 09, 2009I am preparing a letting outline a perjury case against Henry Paulson. I am addressing the letter to Representative Cliff Stearns. Please review the letter and offer your feedback. I want to finalize the letter tonight. I am most interested in feedback on legal concepts and overall organization...
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Has RSS Feed
Posted on August 07, 2009Want case summaries delivered to Bloglines, Google Reader, or whatever RSS device you use? The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals now has an RSS feed: http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/rss/ca8opns_rss.xml I don't do any work in the Eighth Circuit, but their decisions (especially their Section 1983 opinions) are usually sound and well reasoned...
United State Senate Declares: Chris Dodd May Accept Bribes from Subprime Lenders
Posted on August 07, 2009Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd received a better mortgage deal from subprime lender Countrywide, simply because Dodd was a United States Senator. Today, the United States Senate cleared Dodd of wrongdoing. According to CNBC: In the end, it takes a lot for the country's most elite club to turn on one of its own...
Judge Refuses to Confirm Sham Bank of America-SEC Settlement
Posted on August 06, 2009Rulings like these will be good news for America: A judge Wednesday balked at signing off on a $33 million proposed settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America Corp. over executive bonuses. Bank of America on Monday agreed to pay the penalty to settle government charges that it misled investors about Merrill Lynch's plans to pay...
Cash for Clunkers: Ending is Better than Mending?
Posted on August 06, 2009Cash for Clunkers is a fantastic program to think about. We could spend hours talking about it. Consider the angles: ?Ending is better than mending.? That was the theme of the best under-read book out there: Brave New World. It ?Ending better than mending? really a good societal value to teach? Next up: Cash for Trophy Wives...
Unethical Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, Excuses Police Misconduct
Posted on August 05, 2009Thanks to the Internet, we no longer need to take unethical prosecutors like King County prosecutor Dan Satterberg at their word: King County prosecutors will not file criminal charges against a sheriff's deputy who slammed a man into a wall so hard after a foot chase that he was left in a coma...
Bernie Madoff and Goldman Sachs
Posted on August 05, 2009When Bernie Madoff made market gains that left everyone scratching their heads, people called the SEC. The SEC wasn't too interested. We all know how that ended. Investors lost everything. None of the crooks, liars, and bozos from the SEC lost anything...
Larry Summers Protects Goldman Sachs; Forces Out Cybersecurity Czar Melissa Hathaway
Posted on August 04, 2009Cybersecurity Czar Melissa Hathaway has resigned for "personal reasons." The real story is much more interesting. Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal reports: People familiar with the matter said Ms. Hathaway has been "spinning her wheels" in the White House, where the president's economic advisers sought to marginalize her politically...
Myth Busters: Prosecutors as Disinterested Public Servants
Posted on August 04, 2009One of many myths about prosecutors is this: They are humble, disinterested public servants. And so, it is poor form for a lawyer to accuse a prosecutor of filing a high-profile case in an effort to win a promotion or to gain publiclity for a move to a lucrative private sector job...
Philadelphia Police Officer Caught on Tape Assaulting Woman
Posted on August 03, 2009Alberto Lopez Sr. assaulted a woman. He then arrested her for assaulting a police officer. At a preliminary hearing, he lied under oath. The victim of police misconduct was ordered to stand trial. Then this videotape surfaced. Philadelphia police officers asked the gas station owner to delete it...
When is Pointing a Gun at Someone Excessive Force?
Posted on August 03, 2009Baird v. Renbarger, No. 08-2436 (CA7) (denying qualified immunity to police officer who pointed submachgine gun at citizens who posed no threat to officers) provides an outstanding discussion of excessive force within the context of pointing a gun at civilians who poses no threat to the officer...
Corrupt Prosecutor Seeks to Strike Deal With Sergey Aleynikov
Posted on August 03, 2009Matthew Goldstein, the Reuters blogger who broke the Aleynikov story, is reporting: It looks like federal prosecutors may be trying to cut a deal with alleged Goldman Sachs high-frequency trading code stealer Sergey Aleynikov.Today was the day for prosecutors to indict Aleynikov, who was arrested on July 3 on the theft charges...
Police Plant Drugs on Motorist
Posted on August 01, 2009They even had their own hand signal. Obviously, then, this is not the first time these officers have planted drugs on an innocent citizen. EMBED-Cops Plant Drugs On Suspect - Watch more free videos
State v. Outing and Change Blindness: Will the Connecticut Supreme Court Respect Empirical Evidence?
Posted on July 30, 2009There's an interesting case pending before the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Court states the issues as follows: [T]he defendant sought to introduce expert testimony regarding, among other things, the following identification concepts: (1) that witnesses who experience heightened levels of stress during a crime tend to make inaccurate identifications; (2) that under the "weapons focus effect," witnesses tend to focus...
What's the Standard of Review in the Ninth Circuit?
Posted on July 30, 2009I just remembered that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has a huge digest of cases discussing the standard of review. It's several-hundred pages of stuff. Well worth reading and bookmarking. Do any other Circuits have a similar digest? If so, please post a comment with a link to the source material.
"How You Finance Goldman Sachs? Profits"
Posted on July 30, 2009Are you tired of reading about Goldman Sachs? I sure am. Yet the most corrupt criminal organizatin in American history has created a neverending story. In the latest Mother Jones, a former Goldman Sachs insider explains how you (yes, you) are making really rich people even richer...
Justice Sotomayor: Pro-Prosecution or Pro-Civil Liberties? (Pottawattamie County v. McGhee)
Posted on July 30, 2009We are about to soon find out. There can be no more telling of a case than Pottawattamie County v. McGhee. In McGhee, prosecutors who fabricated evidence were denied absolute immunity from suit under Section 1983. Will Sotomayor side with prosecutors who violated the law and ruined lives; or with innocent citizens who are wrongfully accused of crimes? McGhee is...
Quick Thought on Libertarian Paternalism
Posted on July 29, 2009Those opposed to libertarian paternialism should spend some time talking to people with sub-100 IQs. Seriously. Try explaining a basic concept like Pythagora's theorem to someone who is as smart as half of the population. (Relatedly: I tell my liberal friends, mostly Ivy-league grads, that they should go teach at a rural junior college before spouting off that everyone is...
Graffiti Artist [sic] Ordered to Surrender Passport?
Posted on July 29, 2009This is moronic: Thurston County Superior Court Judge Anne Hirsch ordered mixed martial arts champion Jeff Monson to surrender his passport Tuesday after Monson pleaded not guilty to malicious-mischief charges for allegedly spray-painting an anarchist symbol on the Capitol last year...
R. Rex Parris and David C. Wheeler Obtain $370 Million Verdict Against Guess Co-Founder
Posted on July 29, 2009The Associated Press, ABA Journal, and Metropolitian News Daily are all reporting: A Los Angeles Superior Court jury yesterday awarded nearly $370 million in damages against Guess? Inc. co-founder Georges Marciano for claims of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress by several former employees, attorneys involved in the matter have announced...
Edward Eugene Harper and the FBI's Age-Progress Photo/Junk Science Machine
Posted on July 28, 2009Edward Eugene Harper was a serial pedophile. His failure to appear in court 15 years ago got him put on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitive List. He was recently arrested. That's not interesting. Here is what's interesting. Harper made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list...
Norwood v. Vance: Law Professor's Failure to Understand Appellate Procedure Leads to Bad Law
Posted on July 28, 2009Procedural law breaks hearts. The facts are the facts. You can spin - not change - them. Even the substantive law isn't especially malleable. If you lose on the facts or substantive law, why can you do? Curse the law, sure. There is no need for tears or guilt...
Ashcroft v. Iqbal: Supervisory Liability Under Bivens and Section 1983
Posted on July 27, 2009In its recent opinion in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the United States Supreme Court confused the law of supervisory liability. Iqbal's bare majority did not, contra the some gasps in the dissent, overrule supervisory liablity under Bivens or Section 1983. The Court did confuse the law of supervisory liablity...
Sex Crimes Prosecutor Charged With Rape
Posted on July 27, 2009Bizarre is an overused word. This is a bizarre story: As Michael Gressett waited for a jury verdict in a molestation trial, the Contra Costa County sex crimes prosecutor had what he called a "nooner," bringing a fellow prosecutor to his Martinez home for intercourse...
More on the Chris Dodd-Countrywide Connection
Posted on July 27, 2009The Associated Press has this breaking news: WASHINGTON - Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony...
Does the Aleynikov Prosecution Violate the Equal Protection Clause?
Posted on July 25, 2009If I were Sergio Aleynikov's lawyer, I'd seek to dismiss the case under a class-of-one equal protection theory. Why is Aleynikov, unlike other people who allegedly stole trade secrets from Wall Street firms, being criminally prosecuted? Does AUSA Joseph Facciponti, the attorney prosecuting Aleynikov, have a secret and improper relationship with Goldman Sachs? Why did the FBI, less than 48...
High Frequency Trading and Goldman Sachs
Posted on July 24, 2009The New York Times has an excellent article on high frequency trading. Sergey Aleynikov, a man did something very right for the wrong reasons, even makes a cameo. Read the whole thing. If you want to get a better feel for the issues, the Themis Trading blog shows how high frequency trading looks: The three HFT horsemen are C, BAC...
Diversity and Police Abuse
Posted on July 24, 2009The Gates case raises an interesting issue no one wants to discuss. It causes too much cognitive conflict. We are told that we need "diverse" police forces so badly - even if this means discriminating against whites - because more divesity means less police abuse...
Karen Ann Escobar is Unethical Prosecutor
Posted on July 24, 2009Another day, another unethical prosecutor. From United States v. Nobari (here): The defendants raise several claims on appeal, including an allegation that the prosecution improperly presented, as evidence of the defendants? guilt, testimony that drew generalizations on the basis of ethnicity about ?Middle Easterners? and ?Mexicans...
Henry Paulson Can't Keep His Lies Straight
Posted on July 24, 2009Henry Paulson, yet again, is revealed to be a liar and a thief.
Fun With Student Loans and Credit Reports
Posted on July 23, 2009I ran my credit report. I saw a loan on it that I never remember taking out. According to my credit report, I am 1,455 days past due on the loan. I've never made a payment on the loan, as I've never received a bill from the lender. Which is unusual: Student loan providers are pit bulls...
Rep. Marcy Kaptur Cross-Examines Henry Paulson About Warren Buffet-Goldman Sachs Deal
Posted on July 23, 2009Henry Paulson loaned taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs. Warren Buffett loaned private capital to Goldman Sachs. Who got the better deal? Rep. Marcy Kaptur cross-examined Paulson about this issue. Before heading Treasury, Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs...
Tasers and Excessive Force/Section 1983
Posted on July 22, 2009The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion I'll need to review later. Here is the Clerk's summary: 081640P.pdf 07/22/2009 Sandra Brown v. Rob Zarrett, etc. U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 08-1640 U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - Minneapolis [PUBLISHED] [Wollman, Author, with Riley and Shepherd, Circuit Judges] Civil case - civil rights...
Hubbert v. City of Pittsburg, and the Definition of a Police Officer's Duties
Posted on July 21, 2009In Hubbert v. City of Pittsburg, a split panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a police officer who speaks to FBI agents about police misconduct, is doing so pursuant to his official duties as a police officer. In reaching its conclusion, the panel cited California law: Though Huppert argues that he was repeatedly informed by the...
Ceballos' Casualties
Posted on July 21, 2009The biggest fear civil rights and open-government advocates is coming true. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the United States Supreme Court held that a government employee's speech made in a official capacity was not protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court did not consider what would happen...
Barack Obama Expands Goldman Sachs' Power
Posted on July 20, 2009Goldman Sachs is too entrenched in the Federal Government. What is President Barack Obama going to do about it? July 17 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama announced today he was nominating Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to a top economic position at the State Department...
Federal Appellate Practice
Posted on July 20, 2009Just snagged a copy from the secondary book market at Amazon for $125. Looks like an awesome book. Grab 'em while they're hot. (Hat tip: Eugene Volokh)
Police Officers Claimed: "We Just Wanted to Help"
Posted on July 17, 2009Taken from Hopkins v. Bonvicino: On August 22, 2003, two San Carlos Police Officers broke into Bruce Hopkins? home. They did not have a warrant, nor did they have probable cause. All that they had was a statement from a third-party that Hopkins had been involved in an extremely minor traffic incident, an incident so minor that it did not...
John Squires, of Chadbourne & Parke, Gets Handled for Threatening Frivolous Lawsuit
Posted on July 16, 2009John Squires sent a threatening letter to a blogger who published postings critical of Goldman Sachs. In this letter, Squires threatened to file a frivolous lawsuit agianst the blogger. The blogger fought back. He sued Goldman Sachs. And he won. You may read the glorious details here.
More on David Viniar's Statment Regarding Goldman Sachs v. Sergey Aleynikov
Posted on July 15, 2009Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs employee, allegedly stole software from Goldman Sachs that, according to Goldman Sach's lawyer, Assistant United States Attorney Joseph Paul Facciponti, "could [be] use[d] it to manipulate markets in unfair ways...
Joseph Facciponti Lied at Aleynikov Bail Hearing
Posted on July 15, 2009Sergey Aleynikov allegedly stole some software from Goldman Sachs. While on the job, Aleynikov, a former quant at Goldman Sachs, would allegedly downlownd Goldman's software. Assistant United States Attorney Joseph Facciponti is prosecuting Aleynikov for theft of trade secrets...
Conservatives and Liberals Have United
Posted on July 15, 2009Have people on the Left and Right realized that Goldman Sachs is manipulating the markets and stealing billions from taxpayers? Have they realized that Goldman began running the Federal Reserve during George W. Bush's Administration, and continues running the Fed during the Barack Obama Administration? I guess you'll have to watch this video to see what has created such bipartisanship.
As the Country Falls, Goldman Sachs Rises
Posted on July 14, 2009Is Elliot Spitzer the only former elected official in the United States who understands the evil of Goldman Sachs? We know that Barney Frank is on the payroll. What of Barack Obama. Is Obama ignorant or in cahoots? Oh, and before you say it - as if this is a "point...
Sergey Aleynikov Fan Club
Posted on July 13, 2009If you are on Facebook, join the Sergey Aleynikov Fan Club. Aleynikov is the whistleblower who copied Goldman Sachs' illegal, market-manipulating computer software. Aleynikov, who should be heradled as a hero, is being prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice - even though Goldman Sachs has admitted that its software is designed to manipulate the stock market...
Goldman Sachs Makes Bernie Madoff Look Like Pick Pocket
Posted on July 13, 2009Goldman Sachs has admitted that it's trading software allows it to manipulate the market: July 9 (Bloomberg) -- Never let it be said that the Justice Department can?t move quickly when it gets a hot tip about an alleged crime at a Wall Street bank. It does help, though, if the party doing the complaining is the bank itself, and...
Literary Output
Posted on July 13, 2009A novelist who writes 250 words a day is a success: That's a novel a year. A lawyer who writes 250 words a day is a failure: That's barely a billable hour. How then can a lawyer consider herself anything but a writer? It could be quipped that quantity does not equal quality...
Ira Sorkin Got Paid... For What?
Posted on July 10, 2009What exactly did Bernie Madoff's lawyer, Ira Sorkin, actually do? Madoff turned himself in. Sorkin didn't try Madoff's case. Sorking didn't prepare for trial; sort through boxes; have armies of associates write motions and writs; prepare witnesses; hire priviate investigators; and, for good measure, pad bills...
Women More Racist than Men; Liberals as Racist as Ever
Posted on July 09, 2009I always outrage feminists with this claim: Men are less racist than women. Proof: Men have more diversity in their dating lives than women. Really; it's true. How many of your proper white female friends have ever dated or have relations a black guy? How many of your male friends have been with a black chick? It's a fun question...
Textbook False Rape Conviction
Posted on July 09, 2009This sad story has all the telltale signs. You could make a check list. A drunk woman who claims she was raped. She was too drunk to remember what happened; but somehow not too drunk to know she did not give consent. No DNA evidence from the acussed rapist is present...
Using iPhones to Avoid Speed Traps
Posted on July 09, 2009Now this is cool: Area drivers looking to outwit police speed traps and traffic cameras are using an iPhone application and other global positioning system devices that pinpoint the location of the cameras. That has irked D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier, who promised her officers would pick up their game to counteract the devices, which can also help drivers dodge...
Interesting Discusson on Sham Affidavit Rule
Posted on July 09, 2009Plaintiff-deponent gave testimony that would tend to not establish liability. Based on plaintiff-deponent's testimony, there would be no triable issue of material fact; defendant should win. The plaintiff-deponent then introduced evidence from other witnesses that tended to establish liability...
Batson and Comparative Juror Analysis: Stephen Wagstaffe is a Racist and Unethical Prosecutor
Posted on July 09, 2009Ali v. Hickman (CA9) is going to be tedious - but required - reading. Hickman (here) discusses comparative juror analysis in detail. A comparative juror analysis is common sense, but until recently, wasn't the law. Under Batson v. Kentucky, a prosecutor cannot discriminate against black prospective jurors...
How the Legal Blogosphere has Changed
Posted on July 07, 2009There's an interesting post about the changes which have occurred in the blogosphere in general. It's a good summary. The legal blogosphere has changed dramatically since I began blogging over 5 years ago. It's a lot worse than it once was. I probably read 5 or 6 law blogs...
Ninth Circuit Issues Two Potentially Big Cases on Class Certification
Posted on July 07, 2009In Vinole v. Countrywide Home Loans, and Mevorah v. Wells Fargo, the same three-judge panel hols that home loan consultants aren't a proper wage-and-hour class. Mevorah explains why, and thus is the best of the two to read for an understanding of the court's reasoning.
Das Experiment/The Experiment
Posted on July 06, 2009Leave it to the Germans to make a movie dramatizing the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the researchers stopped once people started losing it - just six days. In "The Experiment," the experiment goes on. I don't know how to do movie reviews, so here is a good one...
Obama Becoming a Beta?
Posted on July 06, 2009This is pathethic. Barack Obama is the President of the United States. Yes, dealing with Russians is challenging. Russians are natural alphas. Nevertheless, the Presient of the United States must communicate, "No, fuck you. I'm the President. You come to shake my hand...
Why One Cannot Take Paul Krugman or Other Keynesians Seriously
Posted on July 03, 2009In his latest New York Times column, Krugman "argues" in favor of a second - this time much larter - stimulus. Argues in in quotes, since Krugman doesn't really make an argument. Rather, like a holy man or witch doctor with a direct line to the supernatural, he makes assertions...
Out of Work? Start a Business
Posted on July 03, 2009How many people will take advantage of the incredible opportunity that joblessness offers? It's cliche, but true: Often the best things in life happen after tragedy or trauma. If you had a job you didn't enjoy but could pay the bills with; how do you quit? How do you justify that choice to people you might be supporting? "Sorry, dear,...
Perception and Reality: It's Still Fast Food
Posted on July 03, 2009This blog should encourage thoughts about subjects other than fast food. Must read.
How Shady are Bank Overdraft Fees?
Posted on July 02, 2009Clusterstock is a finance news site with a very pro-capitalist readership. Read the comments if you want to see the anti-banking sentiment. When a bunch of capitalists agree that banks are robbing people, something very criminal is ocurring. There are some good comments regarding the shady practice of overdraft fees...
Lessons from Bernie Madoff, Robert Allen Stanford, and Marc Rich
Posted on July 01, 2009Bernie Madoff surrended himself to authorities. He cooperated fully. He put up no fight. He got 150 years in prison - a death sentence. J. Allen Stanford, who has not yet been convicted, returned from a foreign country to fight the criminal charges against him...
Jury Selection and the Five Factor/Big 5 Personality Factors
Posted on June 30, 2009Snoop (here) focuses on the Big 5 personality factors. Why care? Because it seems that the Big 5 are correlated with actual juror behavior. According to one study: Actual venire members ( N = 764) completed the Big Five Inventory before going through the jury selection process for 1 of 11 criminal or 17 civil trials...
"The Private Lives of Jurors"
Posted on June 29, 2009In the most recent Los Angeles Lawyer is an article exploring the legal and ethical issues of having a private investigator, investigate jurors. (It's here.) It's written by two associates from the best investigative firm in California, Batza & Associates...
Have You Heard?
Posted on June 29, 2009Michael Jackson died, Bernie Madoff got 150 years, and the United States Supreme Court sided with the white firefighters. Life would be unintesting if everyone stopped talking about the same things as everyone else. And if everyone else decided to stop being interested in the same things, life would be a bore...
Western Centric Bias, Pascal's Wager, and Muslim "Freedom"
Posted on June 29, 2009An ignorant 19-year-old from a farming community, I found Pascal's Wager reasonable. "Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose...
Blogger Crosses Fine Line
Posted on June 25, 2009It's one thing to say, "I wish you were dead!" It's quite another to post your photo, work address, references to colleagues of yours who had been killed, etc. Details here.
Even in Recession, Good Help is Hard to Find
Posted on June 24, 2009Saying this deeply offends people, as the truth often does: If you are the best at what you do, you'll always have a job. People go home, drink beer, and watch televion. They are then shocked to lose their jobs. Sure, rarely an industry dies; but even then, start learning a new skill while your industry lives...
Are California's IOUs an Unconstitutional Bill of Credit?
Posted on June 24, 2009California is broke. It's going to start issuing IOUs to creditors. Article One, Section 10 of the United States Constitution provides: "No State shall ... emit Bills of Credit []." Is an IOU a "bill of credit"? I don't know. Do you?
Kindle DX Review
Posted on June 23, 2009Awesome, A+, fantastic, must-see review here. The .pdf feature is what sold me on the DX rather than the Kindle 2. The DX is larger, though. With the Kindle 2, you must convert .pdf files. Not everyone has had good luck with the conversion. Most of my day is spent reading trial transcripts...
Gig: What Your Jurors Do For a Living
Posted on June 23, 2009I was up too late last night reading Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. People from every job imaginable (or unimaginable) give a first-person narrative of what their jobs are like. Each entry is a few pages. Easy to skip from one profession to another...
Conclusive Evidence of Media Cover-Up: New York Times Covers Up David Rohde Kidnapping
Posted on June 21, 2009It doesn't get more overt than this. The New York Times and every other media outlet refused to cover a story involving a kidnapped Times reporter. They had good reasons.... If you believe that it's the job of a media outlet to decide when to cover something that is clearly newsworthy...
Cognitive Bias and Friends
Posted on June 20, 2009As expected, Aristotle gave the best instrumentalist justification for having friends. To paraphrase: We are disgusting, self-involved, snot-producing, hairy beasts who cannot see our own faults. We can easily see the faults in others. By socializing with others, we can see what they do wrong...
How Does the Recession Affect Friendships?
Posted on June 19, 2009That seems to be an interesting topic. I find it boring. If I have money, my friends have money. My friends share the same value system. If your value system is different, then you are not a real friend, and do not have real friends. Your life is empty...
Body Language Tip of the Day: Talk to the Hands, Cuz the Face Ain't Telling the Truth
Posted on June 19, 2009If you want to guess a person's age, look at her hands. More people are using Botox than you'd expect. So the face is sending off false signals. The hands show age much more reliably than the face. Plus, if you see old hands but a youthful face: You have new information...
Are Gold American Eagles Worth What Congress Has Said They Are Worth? Or: The IRS v. Robert Kahre
Posted on June 17, 2009[Editor?s note: I am not a tax protester. Until researching the issue that is subject to this blog post, I thought all of the arguments raised by the tax protester crowd were frivolous. On this issue, I am not so confident.] Take a look at this gold coin...
Why Hasn't Greg Damm Been Disbarred?
Posted on June 17, 2009When I read an article about an overbroad subpoena designed to chill free speech, I saw a familiar name - Greg Damm. Here's the article. Here is my prior coverage of Greg Damm.
Peter Singer Explains Why We Shouldn't Take Academics Seriously
Posted on June 16, 2009Peter Singer issues a non-partisan critique of academia: If I am correct, the vast majority of us who live in developed nations are not living an even minimally decent ethical life. Almost all of us spend money on luxuries ? after all, even bottled water is a luxury when the water that comes out of the tap is free...
Regulation, Doctors, and Universal Health Care
Posted on June 16, 2009Universal health care for all! People say that like it means something. The logistics of universal coverage are complicated. Which is why I roll my eyes at "theorists" who write articles about why it's we must have universal health care. Um, great. We should have nuclear fission, too...
Stallworth Buys 30 Days for Manslaughter?
Posted on June 16, 2009Isn't killing someone considered a crime against the public? If so, then why can you buy yourself out of a prison sentence by giving big money to private parties? That's exactly what happened here: MIAMI ? Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte' Stallworth is going to serve 30 days in jail after pleading guilty in Florida to a DUI manslaughter charge...
Canandian Little Brother is Watching
Posted on June 16, 2009Let's just put cameras everywhere. Every cop car. Every court room. Every judicial chamber. Every prosecutor's office. Let's just make everything public. It's the only solution.
SEC Bans Madoff from Working in Securities Industry: Go Get 'Em Tiger!
Posted on June 16, 2009Several years after being warned that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi Scheme; and several months after people lost billions of dollars; the SEC has finally taken action: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Disgraced money manager Bernard Madoff has been prohibited from working in the securities industry under a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission...
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You
Posted on June 14, 2009I read a lot of books, but few are must-reads. Snoop is one of only two books that I would stake my book-recommending credibility on. Yes, you should buy this book immediately. If you don't get anything out of it, I will donate $10 (the purchase price) to your charity of choice.
Russia's Rape of Germany
Posted on June 13, 2009Why didn't we learn this in history class? Relations between Russia and Germany have not been good since Vladimir Putin's nationalist sabre-rattling this summer, but they are about to get a whole lot worse. A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to...
Kirk Bernard is a Slime Ball
Posted on June 13, 2009I do not oppose lawyer marketing or lawyer advertising. I even respect a certain amount of hustle. There's a line between hustle and shyster-scum-bag-shameless-slime-ball, though. Kirk Bernard crossed it. After a car crash nearly killed someone's child, Kirk Bernard wrote a blog post: Washington Car Crash Kills Couple from Vancouver and Critically injures Son A five-year-old Vancouver boy and his...
Kirk Bernard is Still a Slime Ball; Also a Plagiarist
Posted on June 13, 2009Kirk Bernard, a Seattle personal injury lawyer, drew the blogosphere's attention last night. His marketing is slimy, shameless, and unsavory. It also appears that he is a plagarist. That is, he passes off the writing of others as his own. In reviewing his blog, here is what appears to be his modus operandi: 1...
"See niggas feared Prince and respected Preme"
Posted on June 13, 2009This song is bad ass even without context. It's a rap narrative of the New York drug scene. It's best appreciated in light of this Wikipedia entry on Supreme Team. I also recommend this book: Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler.
Little Brother is Watching
Posted on June 13, 2009One of the unintended consequences of our surveillance society is that it's harder for police to break the law. What was supposed to allow law enforcement to oppress citizens is actually saving innocent civilians. The case of the Colon brothers is illustrative: NEW YORK (June 13) - When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine...
Stephen Louis A. Dillard for the Georgia Supreme Court
Posted on June 12, 2009Stephen Dillard, who blogs as "Feddie" at Southern Appeal, is being considered for the Georgia Supreme Court. He's a longtime e-friend, and good guy, who would be fair to all litigants. Please support him by casting an online vote for him here. (He's about halfway down the page...
J. Calvin Cunningham Rips Off Clients
Posted on June 11, 2009North Carolina J. Calvin Cunningham has been reprimanded by the North Carolina State Bar for cheating clients. This is the kind of stuff that gives lawyers a bad name: A North Carolina lawyer has received a reprimand for billing a divorce client $50 every time he reviewed her bill and every time he sent her a form letter enclosing the...
$1.3 trillion in Wealth Destruction
Posted on June 11, 2009You could spend a lot of time thinking about wealth. Like..... Does it even exist? Take a look at this article, for example: The brute force of the recession earlier this year turned back the clock on Americans' personal wealth to 2004 and wiped out a staggering $1...
California State Bar, in Refusing to Reappoint Scott Drexel, Sends Message to State: We Don't Want Lawyers Disciplined
Posted on June 10, 2009The State Bar of California has sent out a memo: If you want to be the chief lawyer responsible for policing lawyer misconduct, do not actually police misconduct. This is a wink-nod position. Scott Drexel got the memo. From the Daily Journal: SAN FRANCISCO - The State Bar Board of Governors decided this week not to reappoint Scott Drexel, the...
Great Advice for Jobless
Posted on June 10, 2009Stop whining and learn something. If I were jobless, it'd be kind of nice. I'd take a job bar tending or something. Then I'd read books for the rest of my waking hours. It'd be a sabbatical. If I were in need of a law job, I'd spend hours a day becoming a subject matter expert on some area of...
Investing in a Hedge Fund is Like Joining the Country Club
Posted on June 09, 2009Yes, "successful" mutual fund and hedge fund managers are just lucky. Here is the math. Why they don't people invest in a boring fund like Vanguard's S&P 500 Index, or PIMCO Total Return? Because then you don't get to say, "I invest with [insert prestigious hedge fund]...
House Judiciary Committee Votes to Recommend Impeachment of Judge Samuel Kent
Posted on June 09, 2009Details here.
Ricci v. Destefano is a Hard Case -- NOT
Posted on June 08, 2009A lot of people misunderstand the issues in Ricci v. Destefano. This is because you have to know quite a bit about both federal law and constitutional law to understand it. Most do not. Thus, massive confusion. To analyze Ricci, keep a few things in mind...
Life Bias: Better to Live a Slave Than to Have Never Been Born?
Posted on June 08, 2009There must be a term of this. Please educate me. In the meantime, I'll call it the "life bias." Most of us would rather be alive than dead. We'll go to great lengths to remain alive, even if our lives suck. Even most sex slaves don't kill themselves, though most drink and drug themselves to death as they seek to...
High Status/Alpha Body Language
Posted on June 08, 2009Bookmark this microblog before reading on. Interesting article (here) on status and body language. The research shows, as you might expect, that taller people are perceived to be higher status. It's also the case that posture affects one's perception of your status...
Sotomayor is a Multi-Millionaire
Posted on June 08, 2009I am sick of peoples blogging about Sonia Sotomayor's financial situation. Here is the latest, from the ABA Journal: Sonia Sotomayor made more than $205,000 last year as a federal appeals judge and law lecturer. Yet her net worth of $740,000 is relatively low, compared to other justices she would like to join on the U...
Caperton v. Massey Coal
Posted on June 08, 2009The New York Times reports: WASHINGTON ? In a closely watched case involving the confluence of justice, politics and money, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Constitution canrequire an elected judge to step aside in a particular case based on campaign spending in state judicial races...
Calling Anti-Protectionists and Dormant Commerce Clause Wonks
Posted on June 08, 2009I am catching up on case reading, and only just finishing reading NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF OPTOMETRISTS & OPTICIANS LENSCRAFTERS, INC. V BROWN. This opinion did not get the attention it deserved. No amicus briefing. No press coverage upon its release. No blog coverage...
Reality Check: Why are Professional Sports so Dangerous?
Posted on June 07, 2009We hear a lot about the "dangers" of steroids. Yet what is it that really makes sports like football so dangerous? It's the contact, which leads to concussions. In football, a player will receive multiple concussions each year. Why then don't we hear about the dangerous of concussions? It's because concussions are at the very nature of the game...
Legalized Prostitution and Sexual Slavery
Posted on June 06, 2009I'd always said, gee, of course prostitution should be legal. I'm changing my mind. San Francisco has de facto legalized prostitution. You can go to MyRedBook.com to read reviews of "massage parlors." Prostitution is, more-or-less, legal. San Francisco is, not coincidentally, a center for sexual slavery...
Hiding from Truth
Posted on June 06, 2009If one recognizes something as true, then one must take uncomfortable action. Therefore, refuse to recognize the truth. And thus most policy debates and other disagreements begin to make sense.
Charles Bukowski
Posted on June 04, 2009I have not laughed out loud so much since reading Catch-22 over a decade ago. I told my best friend that I no longer needed him. I'd just read Bukowski for fellowship. Some might say he's vulgar. I say that vulgar is all that exists once you embrace reality for what it is...
Did Michael Ireland Sexually Assault a Stripper?
Posted on June 04, 2009Yes, even though limited touching is allowed, it's possible to sexually assault a stripper. Is that what Michael Ireland did? Michael Ireland has filed suit against the club, alleging dancer Sakeena Shageer kicked him 'without warning.' Cheetah Palm Beach manager Rod Kimbrough says that's not quite the way they remember the night...
Men and Women See the World Differently?
Posted on June 04, 2009Holy shit! You mean mean and women see and experience the world differently? In research that we conducted with our colleague Andrew D. Martin, we studied the votes of federal court of appeals judges in many areas of the law, from environmental cases to capital punishment and sex discrimination...
"We Didn't Know He Was Clarence Thomas"
Posted on June 03, 2009How does Justice Thomas treat people when no one is watching? Speaking empathy, how many Supreme Court justices do you think could have immediately bonded with a couple of high school students? Souter? Breyer? Ginsburg? Kennedy? Hah!
Kenny Hulshof is an Unethical Prosecutor; Should be Disbarred
Posted on June 03, 2009Kenny Hulshof is the latest edition to the Mike Nifong Foundation. Details here.
Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas More, and Jurisprudence
Posted on June 03, 2009As a follow-up to this post: Most of you know that Thomas Moe is a saint. He refused to sign an oath stating that King Henry VII's marriage was valid. Signing the oath would have violated God's law. It would have been perfectly legal under man's law. He didn't want to violate his conscience...
Cognitive Dissodance: If Abortion is Murder, What's the Problem?
Posted on June 03, 2009If abortion is murder, what is wrong with killing an abortion doctor? Oh, it's illegal to kill an abortion doctor! If it were World War II, and some Nazis - pursuant to law - came looking for some Jews, would you just hand them over? Would that be moral? That law, after all, is the law...
Congress Moves Fast in Judge Samuel Kent Impeachment Proceedings
Posted on June 03, 2009Congress was not amused.
Congress Should Investigate Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
Posted on June 02, 2009Federal judge (yes, he's still on the payroll) Samuel Kent is going to prison. He sexually assaulted his law clerks. Had Judge Edith Jones and the rest of the Fifth Circuit had their way, Judge Kent would still be a federal judge. Here is my post explaining what those judges did to help a colleague...
Samuel Kent Games System Until Very End
Posted on June 02, 2009Texas federal judge Samuel Kent, whose Edith Jones and other members of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals attempted to cover-up, is soon going to prison on charges relating to sexual assault. He is still getting a salary. Initially, he had applied for permanent disability...
No Second Amendment Right to Possess Assault Weapon in California
Posted on June 02, 2009"In this case, we hold that possession of an assault weapon in California remains unlawful and is not protected by the Second Amendment to the federal Constitution as construed by the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller." So wrote the California Court of Appeal in People v...
Scam Alert: Wells Fargo Refund Application Form
Posted on June 01, 2009This scam looked almost plausible at first. It claimed to have originated from refunds@wellsfargo.com. Why did this look plausible? I have been in a fee dispute with Wells Fargo for years. Maybe I finally won? That's how these scams work. Send out a million e-mails claiming to be from major banks...
Stratton Faxon; and Silver, Golub, & Teitell
Posted on June 01, 2009You're not very good at what you do. Nobody knows your name. So you buy someone else's name. When someone types in the name of a well-known lawyer, you pay Google to have them show your name instead. It gets better. Your name will appear above the name of the lawyer whom the potential client was researching...
Good Trips on Travel Safety
Posted on May 31, 2009Great tips here (via Cowen). I would add: When in a cab, I always sit directly behind the driver. If anything goes down, I am going to strangle him or gouge his eyes out. (This is easy to do when behind a person. Simply grab either side of his head, ensuring that each middle finger goes into his eye sockets...
Abu Ghraib Pics Show Rapes of Women and Children
Posted on May 29, 2009Now we learn why Obama will not release other pictures from Abu Ghraib: The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been ?identified, and appropriate actions? taken...
Poverty in America
Posted on May 29, 2009How bad is the U.S. economic situation? It's so bleak that people are having to decide whether or not to continue paying for satellite television. It's cliche to say, but true: This article reads like something out of The Onion. Here we go: For families like the Ferrells, however, who were already just a car repair or an appliance breakdown...
Evidentiary Foundations and "Opinions"
Posted on May 29, 2009This pisses people off, but it's illustrative: The next time someone says that global warming is occurring, ask them: 1. Who are the leading experts on global warming? 2. What are their backgrounds? 3. Have their climate models made accurate predictions about future events? 4...
Surrendering Your Mind to Experts: Why Have an Opinion at All?
Posted on May 29, 2009Much of my life is performance art. Try it sometime. Pretend to be a global warming denialist. It's great fun, and very revealing. Some very well-educated people started talking about global warming. I said that I was skeptical. Everyone at the table turned against me...
Keyboard Cat and Police Training Video
Posted on May 28, 2009Greatest thing to ever appear on the Internet?
Criminalizing Comic Book Porn
Posted on May 28, 2009Interesting case for those of you who follow free speech issues. (UPDATE: Read the comments.) Some dude in Iowa is going to prison for collecting comic book images of cartoon children being molested. At first I thought Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition would apply...
Beta Males Find Financial Ruin
Posted on May 28, 2009What happens when you let your wife pressure you into buying a house? Foreclosure. Unless you wife can afford to pay the mortgage, she has no right to demand that you purchase anything. That is the essence of equality. That so many males get in over their heads because of women is proof that we do not live in a...
True or False?
Posted on May 28, 2009So long as everyone agrees to believe the lie, then the lie will remain the truth. A) Sometimes true. B) Always true. C) Never true. D) Other.
Things to Do Before People Die
Posted on May 28, 2009My grandma is going to be dead soon. It will have an emotional impact on me, but what can you do. Man is mortal, and she has lived plenty of decades. This weekend I am going to compile a scrap book of pictures documenting things that have occurred in my life over the past few years since I moved from...
Explaining Why Obama is the Supreme Alpha Male
Posted on May 27, 2009I was having a discussion with a world-famous blogger over Facebook. I explained to his Facebook audience why Obama was an alpha. One person suggested that Obama was not an alpha. He was beta. There is obviously a supreme misunderstanding of the alpha male persona...
Best Summary of Prop 8/California Gay Marriage Decision
Posted on May 27, 2009From Patrick at Popehat: I?ve commented many times here concerning what a silly state you people live in. I find your California notions of easy judicial fiat (the West Coast and the Ninth seem to be most ?activist?) and easy plebiscites by direct vote revolting...
Pro Bono for People Who Do Nothing for Others?
Posted on May 27, 2009Why is it that people who give no money or time to charity think that lawyers should give them tens-of-thousands of dollars of free service? I once asked someone who wanted a free ride: "Do you even give blood, man?" It's one thing to not give money to charity because you're broke...
Is Sotomayor's Impoverished Upbringing Relevant?
Posted on May 27, 2009So Sotomayor grew up poor. According to liberals who did not grow up poor, this matters. For some reason. Why? Supposedly it makes people more empathethic. Well, I grew up pooooooor. Not John Edwards, "My dad was a union manager making middle-class wages" poor...
Prediction Watch: Who Got the Supreme Court Nomination Wrong?
Posted on May 26, 2009All of the law professors said it would be Diane Wood or Elena Kagan. I knew it would be Sotomayor. That so many people got this wrong shows how little people understand President Barack Obama. He sees race everywhere. Race is his obsession. Was the first black President going to miss his chance to nominate the first Latina to the...
Clothing in The Courtroom
Posted on May 24, 2009The topic du jour is clothing in the courtroom. It's all over the law blogs. Some horny old male judges said that when a woman shows some cleavage and legs, the judges have to go masturbate in chambers before being able to pay attention to the woman's argument...
Has Mike Tyson Found Inner Peace?
Posted on May 24, 2009Appearing in the audience at UFC 98, Mike Tyson gave an interview to a Fox Sports reporter. Tyson seems to have some some sort of inner peace. What thing not know about Tyson is that he's an intelligent, thoughtful person. He was an example of what mental illness plus excessive testosterone does to a person...
Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World
Posted on May 21, 2009I've never agonized so much over a blog review of a book. Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World had a weird effect on me. I read the book several months ago, and am only now blogging it. What gives? First, it made me very angry. These guys are at MIT, and they didn't know that if you want to...
Honest Signals: Fluency
Posted on May 21, 2009While Honest Signals itself was not a very enlightening book, it did lead to some helpful reminders. Here's a good tip from me. Fluency is an honest signal. Get a guy talking about something he knows. Notice the pace he?ll use. Each person has her own style of speaking...
Transcending Evolution: On Vanity
Posted on May 20, 2009Vanity is the unnecessary obsession with what strangers think of you. A vain person seeks the approval of strangers. In the past, the approval of members of the public may have kept you alive. In modern society, social approval is valuable only instrumentally...
Prosecutorial Misconduct Database or Wiki
Posted on May 20, 2009We really should start keeping track of unethical prosecutors. I identify unethical prosecutors in the subject title of Crime & Federalism whenever I see names, e.g., Juliet Sorensen; Suzanne Sullivan; Brenda Morris; William Sullivan; Greg Damm; Kimberly Frayn; Sean Cronin; Andrea Hoffman; etc...
Suzanne Sullivan is an Unethical Prosecutor.
Posted on May 20, 2009Oh my God. It's happening. Judges are finally doing something about prosecutorial misconduct. Years from now, the Ted Stevens prosecution might be seen as the tipping point: Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts recently issued an order requiring the Boston U...
Michael Hiltzik, Scumbag, Lies About California Taxes
Posted on May 20, 2009The Los Angeles Times is getting more embarrassing every day. I'll celebrate when they are bankrupt. Being biased is bad enough. But to publish outright lies? That is what Michael Hiltzik's latest column is full of. As a warm-up, Hiltzik starts with a little spin: The most onerous lie is that Californians are burdened by the highest state taxes in...
Want to Rape Children? Become a Catholic Priest
Posted on May 20, 2009When will so-called God-fearing members of the Catholic Church put an end to this? A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades - and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation...
Dolla Got Shot at the Beverly Center
Posted on May 19, 2009This fine young man depicted in this video was shot in the upscale Beverly Center. What a tragedy: Most hilarious comment? From the L.A. Times article's comment section: "hmph! well, you know, there's a recession on. i guess a dolla doesn't go as far as it used to...
Quinn Emanuel Associate Should be Fired
Posted on May 19, 2009"FIRST YEAR ASSOCIATE'S" writing is terrible. He suffers from, "Every thought that enters my head is worthy of being read" syndrome. He's also a bore. Fire him.
25 Rich Athletes Who Went Broke
Posted on May 19, 2009An interesting article on how millions get lost. Some are spendthrifts, but most lost their money in business investments. Everyone wants to be a businessperson. Most businesses fail. Take the money, put it in tax-free muni bonds, and chill out. But, no...
"Message in What We Buy, but Nobody?s Listening"
Posted on May 19, 2009Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior is getting a lot of rave reviews from people I consider smart. That's enough of an endorsement for me to buy it. The New York Times reviews the book here. Much of Spent won't surprise people who have studied sociobiology (which has since been given the more politically correct name, "evolutionary psychology")...
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Market Meltdown
Posted on May 18, 2009I am becoming increasingly bitter. It's because I've realized that almost everyone has a religion. With the Right, it's a belief in holy ghosts that are so powerful that religious people go see doctors for the latest product of rationality. With the Left, it's a belief in Political Correctness...
Are Cross-Gender Searches Unconstitutional Under the Fourth Amendment
Posted on May 18, 2009The Ninth Circuit holds that it's reasonable under the Fourth Amendment for men to strip search women; and for women to strip search men. while prisoners and detainees retain ?legitimate expectations of bodily privacy from persons of the opposite sex,? we are obligated to acknowledge that such rights are ?extremely limited...
How to Spot a Liar
Posted on May 17, 2009Spotting a liar is interesting. Empirical studies show that people cannot tell who is telling the truth. This is true even when those people are no longer people, but magically transform into jurors. It takes a lot of training to spot a liar. There are guidelines, not rules...
Marshmallow-Flavored Strippers
Posted on May 17, 2009There is no such thing as will power. How do you say, "No," to a temptation? The best advice is to avoid temptation in the first place. Yet that is not will power. That is avoidance. Will power is letting a stripper sit on your lap while you get "in the moment," embracing the experience...
New York Times on Minorities and the Market Meltdown
Posted on May 16, 2009When the housing bubble burst, many of blamed government in addition to Wall Street. Wasn't it a bad idea for the government to demand banks loans money to people with bad credit and low incomes - simply because those people were not white? We were told that asking the question was racist...
College
Posted on May 16, 2009It's true that college students are treated unbelievably well by the criminal justice system. Why? Shouldn't we treat people who are in college but screw up worse? Think about it. If a person makes it to college, the odds are that he's had some chance in life...
Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor
Posted on May 15, 2009[In five years of blogging, I've maybe posted maybe half a dozen press releases. When I do post a release, it's never for a fee, or as a quid pro quo for a review copy of the book.] Arbitrary Justice was just released in paperback, though, and it seems promising...
Honest Signals
Posted on May 14, 2009If you can't tell this person is lying, something is very wrong with you:
The Myth of the Rational Judge Lives
Posted on May 13, 2009I think that even most economists now reject the theory of the rational actor as a myth. Do lawyers still follow a version of this myth? Orin Kerr has a post about judging that makes me think he believes in rational judges. Do judges really objectively observe these things called "facts" and "legal arguments"? Is there any empirical support for...
Prosecutorial Discretion
Posted on May 12, 2009People say they trust prosecutors. They believe in prosecutorial discretion. Great. Here's my idea: Make everything a crime. I'm not even joking. Let's just make everything illegal, and leave it to prosecutors to sort out the good and bad amongst us. We trust these men and women, these prosecutors...
Class Action Lawsuit Against Austin, Texas for Equal Protection Violation?
Posted on May 12, 2009Red-light cameras in Austin, Texas have caught many motorists running a red light. If you're a police officer, you - unlike every else - won't get a traffic citation: Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo responded with a powerful statement: ?It is a concern...
How Does Marilyn vos Savant Eat?
Posted on May 12, 2009Dieting advice from the smartest person in the world.
Allen Stanford: Free Because War on Drugs Trumps Financial Fraud
Posted on May 11, 2009How important is the War on Drugs? It's so important that the SEC allowed investors to lose billions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme: Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of bank fraud, is the subject of an investigation by the BBC's Panorama. Sources told Panorama that if he was a paid anti-drug agency informer, that could explain why a...
Subsidizing Stupidity
Posted on May 10, 2009When the United States has universal health care, we'll all be paying for the operations these morons need.
"Stepping Backward Enhances Cognitive Control"
Posted on May 09, 2009Via Tyler Cowen comes this interesting finding: The way in which we are moving influences how our brain is functioning ? and applying what is known about the relationship between movement and thought poses interesting challenges for designers Koch and his colleagues found that ?Stepping backward significantly enhanced cognitive performance compared to stepping forward or sideways...
Credit Card Company Scams
Posted on May 08, 2009Last week there was an ignorantly hilarious post at the Volokh Conspiracy by Todd Zywicki. Zywicki is opposed to the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights. Let me tell you about some of the practices the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights combats. Then perhaps someone can explain to me how - unless he is being paid as a "consultant"...
The Face of a Sociopath
Posted on May 07, 2009Daniel Hood bound and gagged a teenage girl so that a friend could rape her. I posted about that here. I've obtained a picture of Hood. Now I understand why everyone is willing to let him "move past" the "incident." I regret my earlier post. My earlier post assumed that Mr...
University of Tennesse Pays Violent Rapist, Daniel Hood, to Attend College
Posted on May 07, 2009The University of Tennessee's school colors are orange. How appropriate, given that they've give an athlete scholarship to the star of a real-life Clockwork Orange: KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Tennessee has signed a prep football star who at the age of 13 was found by a juvenile court to have helped rape a relative...
Bill Hicks' Lost Performance on David Letterman
Posted on May 06, 2009The coward David Letterman finally aired Bill Hicks' performance on the show. The performance was not allowed in 1993 because it might have offended Christians. Because the Christian faith is so strong that any criticism - and the performance was time - on Christianity is a cause of outrage...
Most Surreal Experience of My Life?
Posted on May 05, 2009In a post I'm drafting, I typed: "A reporter in Canada reprinted some cartoons that offended Muslims so much that Muslims started killing people and blowing stuff up. For this, the reporter was obviously charged with a hate crime against Muslims." Ponder that...
Pro-Muslim Media Bias; and a Contemporary Look at Religious History
Posted on May 05, 2009Media bias is a great thing. A recent Independent article notes that 16 people have been banned from Great Britain for being too hateful. The article begins: Sixteen people banned from entering the UK were "named and shamed" by the Home Office today. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since...
Two Good Posts on the Swine Flu
Posted on May 05, 2009First, even if the swine flu "crisis" is over, the "crisis" was a very good thing. Yes, governments did the right thing. Second, yes, a pandemic is a low probability event. It's also a catastrophic one. It would be nice if more people would read The Black Swan...
The Social Psychology of Con Artists
Posted on May 04, 2009A great con artist is a great persuader. A con man must persuade a mark to trust him. Usually a con involves a mark thinking that he is part of the con - a co-con artist. How does a con artist con you? By using principles of social psychology. While social psychology is a broad topic, Influence: The Psychology of...
Bernie Madoff and the Social Psychology of the Con
Posted on May 04, 2009Let's look at the six principles of Influence. Then let's look at Bernie Madoff (hat tip: Alex). Influence lists six main principles of persuasion: reciprocation; commitment and consistency; social proof; authority; liking; scarcity. Reciprocation. Not obviously present...
Next Supreme Court Justice Should Have Empathy, not Sympathy
Posted on May 04, 2009Barack Obama has said that he wants to appoint a Supreme Court Justice who has empathy for the common person. He is spot-on. However, Harvard man though he may be, I wonder: Does he understand the difference between empathy and sympathy? A person develops sympathy from reading about the problems of others...
When "Public" Doesn't Mean "Public"
Posted on May 04, 2009One judge took seriously the claim that courtrooms are public: It seemed like a perfect case to ?broadcast? live on the World Wide Web. After all, what could be more Internet-oriented than a court case about the illegal downloading of music files? So in January, U...
How Religion and Culture (Literally) Enslave
Posted on May 03, 2009People often speak of culture as enslaving their spirit. Yet religion and culture are today responsible for the literal enslavement of women: Specific cultural factors also ensnare victims into extended sex slavery. Parents sent young Thai women to work in the entertainment industry to earn prove to provide for them into old age...
Edification Tip of the Day: Learning While Exercising with iPod Shuffle
Posted on May 02, 2009I have an AirDyne. It's a miserable piece of equipment, which is why it works. I have iPod I use while lifting weights, but the same music that works for weights (gangsta rap and Metallica) doesn't work as well for cardio. (Cardio is the time to grow new neurons and increase your IQ; more on that later...
Who Will Replace Justice Souter?
Posted on May 01, 2009The ABA Journal listed possible nominees for the United States Supreme Court: Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Elena Kagan, U.S. Solicitor General; Seth Waxman, a partner at Washington, D.C.?s Wilmer Hale; Judge Diane Wood of the 7th U...
Lawyers Are People, Too?
Posted on May 01, 2009There's an interesting post at Simple Justice about the perception judges have of lawyers. In sum: No one believes that lawyers actually do things for some reason than getting clients. His post is a lengthy discussion. I think the judges' premise is frustrating...
Issue Framing; and Making Abstract Ideas Concrete
Posted on May 01, 2009Would you eat that much sugar for breakfast? What does 39 grams of sugar look like? A nutrition blog that will inspire you to think of ways to better frame issues; and to bring abstract concepts to life. Check it out.
Why Justice Souter is Way Cooler than Justice Scalia
Posted on May 01, 2009He's giving up one of the most powerful jobs in the world to hang out in New Hampshire to climb mountains and read books and stuff. Seriously. How cool is that? People have a man crush on Scalia. I've never understood it. Scalia's ego needs constant food and water...
American Express Credit Card Scam
Posted on April 30, 2009I've studied credit card scams and abuses in the abstract. I wanted to do an experiment to see how shady credit card company "accounting" really is. My cynical self was astounded. I'll tell you what I did, and then show you what happened. I'm sure some shyster can explain why this "accounting" was the product of "free choice" or "freedom...
Justice as Portrayed in A Bronx Tale: "Now You's Can't Leave"
Posted on April 30, 2009I have never seen a better cinematographic depiction of justice. Have you?
Justice David Souter is Retiring
Posted on April 30, 2009Some liberal woman is going to have a nice night tonight.
How Science Becomes Religion
Posted on April 29, 2009One interesting issue with the social sciences is this: You'll often hear people say, "The data show [insert some proposition.]" Does the data show anything; or do we twist the data to conform to our beliefs? Let's look at a recent headline: "Survey: Women still earn less than men...
Putting Large Numbers In Perspective: What Does $100 Million Look Like?
Posted on April 29, 2009Fantastic video:
"Q&A on swine flu with virus hunter Nathan Wolfe: 'We've created a perfect storm for viruses'"
Posted on April 28, 2009An expert on pandemics explains why even if we shouldn't be worried about swine flu, we should be worried about swine flu.
What is Law?
Posted on April 28, 2009Norm Pattis asks: What is law? His working definition provides: The law ... is a set of rules setting forth the minimum conditions of order necessary for the broadest class of people to pursue their individual ends. Here is my definition of the law: Law is the use of the legal system to impose one's will upon another...
The Power of Fuck
Posted on April 28, 2009The United States Supreme Court is afraid of a word? So sayeth Ken at Popehat.
Don't Call Swine Flu, Swine Flu
Posted on April 28, 2009I wish this were from The Onion. But, no, this is truly how politically correct the United States has become: WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - What's in a name? U.S. pork producers are finding that the name of the virus spreading from Mexico is affecting their business, prompting U...
Swine Flu Dialogue
Posted on April 27, 2009Do all roads lead to Pulp Fiction? Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don't eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals...
Political Correctness and Swine Flu
Posted on April 27, 2009The people who are supposed to be looking out for America's best interest have refused to screen incoming passengers from Mexico for swine flu: WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) - The United States is not testing airplane travelers from Mexico for the swine flu virus that has heightened fears of a possible pandemic, U...
Time for a Song
Posted on April 27, 2009With airplanes and swine flu flying through our air space, what better to do than listen to some music? If Crime & Federalism had a theme song, this would be it:
Swine Flu and Big Government: Chicken or Egg Problem.
Posted on April 27, 2009Did the government create swine flu in order to control the populace? Or is the government merely using the swine flu to control the populace?
Is the U.S. Government Preparing to Attack Its Citizens Again? 9/11 Part II?
Posted on April 27, 2009Look at the picture and read the stories. A dress rehearsal for another "terrorist" attack? Right, right. There is nothing to fear. 9/11 was totally carried out by people who lived in caves. I think the swine flu pandemic won't get out of hand now. Swine flu was probably created by the United States government to distract us from the...
When Would a Reasonable Person Really Feel Free to Leave?
Posted on April 27, 2009Under the Fourth Amendment, a seizure of a person must be reasonable. What is a seizure? A citizen is seized when a reasonable person in the citizen's position would not feel free to leave. Ultimately, this is an empirical question. That has not stopped the United States Supreme Court from reaching some activist results...
Swine Flu to Cost Trillions
Posted on April 26, 2009I recently got into SEF, a fund that shorts the stock market. I'm hoping my timing was perfect, as this swine flu might devastate the economy: Below are estimates of economic costs of such a disaster: * The World Bank estimated in 2008 that a flu pandemic could cost $3 trillion and result in a nearly 5 percent drop in...
Mexico City Doctor Claims Swine Flu Out of Control
Posted on April 26, 2009An alleged doctor told the BBC: I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who...
Swin Flu Could Become Pademic: Prepare for Swine Flu
Posted on April 26, 2009It's everywhere, and it could get bad. I have some Tamiflu in the mail. Where is yours? When hordes of zombies are infected, what will you do? Stand behind line with the zombies? How will you do that, when you're puking your guts out. Or will send a healthy loved out one out to infect herself or himself? What kind...
Preventing the Swine Flu
Posted on April 26, 2009I'm not tripping out over swine flu, but I'm being careful. Yesterday, for example, I stayed inside while it was busy outside. Once most people went home, I went outside to run my errands. Avoid people and wash your hands. The CDC also recommends: Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze...
How to Obtain Tamiflu
Posted on April 26, 2009I'm looking for a reliable online source I can pass on to you. I haven't found a good one yet. A doctor can call it in. If you're friendly with a doctor, he or she probably will. Prescripting Tamiflu isn't like prescribing steroids or something. It's more like getting a prescriptions for antibiotics...
Tamiflu
Posted on April 25, 2009Does anyone have a good source for Tamiflu? This swine flu stuff might be serious. It seems that if you take Tamiflu within 48 hours of symptoms, you'll be OK. I'd like to have some Tamiflu on hand in case hordes of people are infected. Please leave a comment or e-mail me if you can help.
Marriage-as-Prostitution
Posted on April 25, 2009The Onion does a brilliant job with a commonly-debated issue: What is prostitution? Housewife Charged In Sex-For-Security Scam AKRON, OH?Area resident Helen Crandall, 44, was arrested by Akron police Sunday, charged with conducting an elaborate "sex for security" scam in which she allegedly defrauded husband Russell Crandall out of nearly $230,000 in cash, food, clothing and housing over the past...
California is Bankrupt
Posted on April 25, 2009No one wants to bu California's bonds. The state isn't credit worthy. You mean letting in millions of low-wage earners who consume more in public benefits than they contribute was a bad idea? And that allowing teachers, nurses, and prison guard unions get too strong was a bad idea? No way...
Swine Flu Update for Texas and California
Posted on April 25, 2009Human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection have been identified in the U.S. in San Diego County and Imperial County, California as well as in San Antonio, Texas. Internationally, human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection have been identified in Mexico...
Conservative Hypocrisy: 65% of Right-Wing Bloggers Oppose Free Trade
Posted on April 24, 2009Right-wing blogger David Kopel recently took a poll that asked: Question 2 was "Should Congress repeal the trade embargo on Cuba this year?" One hundred percent on the Left thought so, as 35 percent on the right. I voted No, with the explanation "Repeal if and only if repeal advocates can present a plan in which repeal can help lead...
The Federal Government's Check-Kiting Scheme
Posted on April 24, 2009The United States government is engaged in an illegal check kiting scheme. Well, of course it's not illegal. Just as Social Security, Ponzi Scheme thought it may be, is not illegal. Details here.
Obama to Take on Scam Student Loan Industry
Posted on April 24, 2009One reason higher education is so expensive is because there is too much easy money given to students. Any student with a pulse can get a loan. Colleges and universities know this. They price themselves accordingly. Thus you have thousands of Marxists and other egalitarians earning six figures...
Obama to Go After Credit Card Companies
Posted on April 24, 2009Good for him. A blog with crime in its title could devote itself exclusively to the credit-card industry while remaining on topic.
Stop Corporate Abuse: Threaten to Call the Cops
Posted on April 23, 2009I recently stayed at a hotel that I read online was dog friendly. When I checked in, I had Amicus with me. I went up to my room, went to bed, and woke up the next morning. A woman comes screaming at me as I'm leaving the hotel. "Dogs aren't allowed here!" "Um, OK...
Mental States v. Outcomes
Posted on April 23, 2009Why do people look to the mental states of person rather than the outcomes the person produces? Part of this comes from religious superstition. The Bible provides that: ?But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness...
When Caught in a Lie: Deny, Deny, Deny
Posted on April 23, 2009This is hilarious. People get totally busted cheating on their girlfriends on the radio. The cheaters always deny it. No criminal lawyer will find any of this surprising. "But they have you on video." It wasn't me. Anyhow, this is funny. I haven't laughed so hard in weeks...
Liking Principle and Jury Persuasion
Posted on April 22, 2009According to the liking principle: People like people like them. Jurors are people. How can you show a juror that you are like him or her? Here is one lawyer's idea: [A trial lawyer] also showed some flair with his dress, sporting a tie that featured a wolf howling below a full moon...
The False Category of "Torture"
Posted on April 22, 2009Fire a missile into a building knowing that 100% of the enemy will not die. Fire a missile into a building knowing that some will survive. Some will have third-degree burns. Their skin will peel off of their legs when the clothing that has melted into the soldier's skin is removed...
Blagojevich: Profile in Pathological Narcissism
Posted on April 22, 2009If you look deep enough, this superficial article provides a great look into a pathological mind.
More Good Thoughts on Torture
Posted on April 22, 2009From a former Assistant United States Attorney; good reading. The entire discussion of torture is a great illustration of how morality shapes facts. The torture-related issues should be separate. First, is torture effective in gathering intelligence? Second, if so, should we use it? People don't reason that way...
Good Thoughts on Torture
Posted on April 21, 2009Good post. I've never opposed torture. It has its uses. It was just bothersome to hear hacks claim that water boarding wasn't torture. I've always said, "Yeah, water boarding is torture. So what?" If you know a guilty person has information that would save an innocent party, then the decision to torture is easy...
Tea Parties and Media Propoganda
Posted on April 21, 2009The people at these rallies seem a bit odd. Fair enough. Yet watch this video. Tell me that CNN did not deliberately lie in its coverage of the tea party. CNN is a propaganda agent for the Obama Administration.
Tea Party Protesters Boo Republican Gresham Barrett
Posted on April 21, 2009Think what you will of the people who attend these various tea parties. Maybe they are crazy. Who knows. That said, the media has lied about the tea parties. The people attending these rallies are not pleased with Republicans, either. The tea parties are not part of some Republican conspiracy...
We've Got a Friend in Israel
Posted on April 21, 2009Today it's being reported that Israel has an American Congressperson in their back pocket. Jane Harman of California made a deal with a pro-Israel lobby to sell out American interests in order to further Israeli interests. How lovely. Most Americans do not know this, but Israel blew up a United States naval vessel in 1967...
Coherent Stories are Better than True Stories
Posted on April 20, 2009At a story telling seminar, one lesson stuck to my ribs. It's something I've thought about for the past half-decade. This might be mundane to you. To me, it was life-altering: It's better that a story be coherent than true. We could talk about that idea for hours, from various angles...
The-World-As-Math
Posted on April 20, 2009I never got into hard math. It required some work. As a student, I wasn't interested in work. I could read/write/bullshit with ease. Over the past couple of years - as I've thought more about pluralistic perception - I've appreciated math. Math is everywhere...
Plea Agreement in International Drug Smuggling Cases Better Be International
Posted on April 20, 2009Because the barriers of entry to practice criminal law are low, you often see a lot of hacks practicing criminal law. You see a lot of malpractice. Usually, you feel sorry for the client. "How could the lawyer have been so incompetent?" Sometimes, though, you read a case that scares you...
TicketVoid.Com is Spam; Steven L. Hill is an Unethical Lawyer
Posted on April 19, 2009Colorado lawyer Steven L. Hill has hired a company to spam hundreds (thousands?) of websites, to promote his new company, TicketVoid.com. Spamming is unethical. Moreover, it appears that Steven Hill doesn't even have any experience with DUI law. You may read the details here.
Report on Right Wing Extremism
Posted on April 16, 2009For your review. (It could be a hoax report.) Download Extremismreport
Cognitive Dissonance, Racial Profiling, and Right-Wing Extremists
Posted on April 16, 2009Shouldn't all of these statements be true (or false)? Black people commit more crimes than whites. Therefore, racially profiling should be allowed. Muslim males were responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing. They were also responsible for 9/11...
The Torture Memos Have Been Released
Posted on April 16, 2009Here are the full memos. Some pretty troubling stuff (via Gowder.)
Tour the AlloSphere
Posted on April 15, 2009Free yourself from distractions for the next 6 minutes. Turn off the phone and ignore your e-mail. Watch this video. Inhale the sights and sounds with your brain, as if you were taking a deep breath of oxygen. Whoa:
"My Stroke of Insight"
Posted on April 15, 2009This is a fantastic video. Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor had a massive stroke. What was her stroke like? What insights did she have? This is a must-watch video: She has a great book out, too: For years I have been able to do what she describes - namely split whether or not my left or right brain controlled my...
9/11, Cognitive Bias, and the Official Explanation
Posted on April 14, 2009We all know how the World Trade Center's Two Towers fell down. An airplane hit them. Jet fuel coated fire-resistant iron. There was a fire. The fire-resistant steel lost all strength. The building went into a controlled free fall - just like a building in a controlled demolition does...
Why Sir Thomas More is Burning in Hell
Posted on April 14, 2009Tom Kirkendall has "The Trial of St. Thomas More" videos here. I used to respect Thomas More; and I can quote A Man for All Seasons. Yet here is something most don't know: Thomas More burned Lutherans at the stake. So the man who would "give the Devil benefit of law," burned people to death for not accepting Catholic dogma...
Scientific Bias: Overt and Covert
Posted on April 14, 2009Imagine I promised a $1,000,000 prize to any group of scientists who could prove that 9/11 was caused by a controlled demolition. When researchers proved what I asked them to prove: Would you take their assertions seriously? Or would you say, "This is unreliable pay-for-play...
Storytelling Tip
Posted on April 14, 2009What words and phrases describe a subject's mental state? Lots of fantastic stuff here.
Lies That Scientists Tell (And that You Believed or Still Believe)
Posted on April 14, 2009A list I will update on my whim. Feel free to add to the list: Lie: Until very recently, scientists claimed that steroids "didn't work." The Physicians Desk Reference stated that "anabolic steroids have not been shown to enhance athletic ability." Truth: That claim was so moronic that anyone who believed it isn't even worth talking to...
Obama's Lifting of Cuba Travel Restrictions Violates Equal Protection Clause
Posted on April 13, 2009What about me? WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama directed his administration Monday to allow unlimited travel and money transfers by Cuban Americans to family in Cuba, and to take other steps to ease U.S. restrictions on the island, a senior administration official told The Associated Press...
High Five to Norm Pattis
Posted on April 13, 2009Norm Pattis got an acquittal in a very difficult case. The defendant, a police officer, was charged with stealing funds intended for informants. The story is here.
Less Law in a Lawyer's Blog
Posted on April 12, 2009Norm Pattis is cutting down on his legal blogging, and he explains why. I applaud his decision. One-Dimensional Man may have been about materialism. It's a useful metaphor for lawyers, too.
Frank Ricci and Me and My White Privilege
Posted on April 12, 2009Frank Ricci was a firefighter with dyslexia. He wanted a promotion. He was willing to work for it. He worked several hours a day to prepare for a promotional exam. Since his reading wasn't very good, he hired someone to read firefighter's manuals onto audiotapes...
Federal Judge Sanctions Florida's United States Attorney (Sean Cronin and Andrea Hoffman Are Unethical Prosecutors)
Posted on April 10, 2009Another judge is taking prosecutorial misconduct seriously: In the wake of a prosecutorial misconduct scandal in the corruption case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in Washington, a Miami federal judge imposed extraordinary sanctions Thursday on federal prosecutors in South Florida for secretly taping the defense team of a physician who was ultimately acquitted in a prescription drug case...
Making an Unconscious Act a Conscious One
Posted on April 09, 2009How can you break bad habits? If that habit is the product of an unconscious act, there is a clever way of breaking the habit. From My Voice Will Go With You: A medically retired policeman told me, "I have emphysema, high blood pressure, and, as you can see, I am grossly overweight...
The Realpolitik of the Stevens Dismissal
Posted on April 08, 2009George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley, the preeminent voice on corruption in Alaska politics, thinks that Attorney General Eric Holder moved to dismiss the Stevens cases to avoid further scrutiny of the DOJ's handling of the prosecution: The decision of Attorney General Eric Holder to drop the case was portrayed as an act of self-discipline by the Justice Department...
Federal Judge Fed Up With Brenda Morris and William Welch II
Posted on April 07, 2009U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has lost all patience with the unethical DOJ lawyers who prosecuted former Senator Ted Stevens: Note to the Justice Department, FBI and IRS: Don't destroy any evidence in the Ted Stevens prosecution. That order came from U...
Need Help From Texas Lawyer
Posted on April 07, 2009Marcus Luttrell's dog was murdered. (Details here.) Four people were involved. Luttrell heard all four of the dog killers laughing and joking. Two of the dog killers are claiming to be "witnesses," and thus have no been identified by the media. Based on a quirk in the law, they might escape criminal prosecution...
Alfonso Hernadez and Michael Edmunds Murdered Marcus Luttrell's Dog
Posted on April 07, 2009The very sad story is here. Four men aged 18-24 went around killing dogs. Two are claiming to be witnesses. If anyone finds out who these "witnesses" are, please let me know so that we can identify them prominently on the blog.
Another Report from the Ted Stevens Case
Posted on April 07, 2009Unfortunately I don't live in D.C., so I couldn't attend these hearings. Fortunately the Legal Times has been providing excellent coverage. The latest: U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said Tuesday that in his 25 years on the bench, he had never seen anything approaching the "mishandling and misconduct" perpetrated by the government in the case of former Alaskan Sen...
Brenda Morris, Other Stevens Prosecutors to Face Criminal Contempt Proceedings
Posted on April 07, 2009Wow. Dissatisfied with the pace of DOJ's internal investigation into the bungled prosecution, Sullivan said today that he would commence criminal contempt proceedings against the original trial team and their supervisor, and appoint a non-government lawyer to prosecute the case...
What is a "Cigar Band"?
Posted on April 06, 2009EBay prohibits people from selling cigars on eBay. In order to get around this prohibition, sellers advertise their cigar products as CIGAR BAND ONLY. See, e.g., this auction: The Value is in the thirteen bands as the cigars were stored well but not for consumption...
Phoenix Police Raid Home of Local Police-Misconduct Blogger
Posted on April 06, 2009This hasn't hit the national news yet. Nonetheless, Prison Planet reports: In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department...
Using Hypnotic Techniques for Persuasion
Posted on April 06, 2009[Editor's note: This post is rough. I am still synthesizing these issues. I hope others will explore these issues with me. I've been reading Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors (here); and My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H...
George Orwell on Metaphors
Posted on April 05, 2009From "Politics and the English Language": By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image...
Truckers Are Serial Killers
Posted on April 05, 2009It took law enforcement how long to realize this? The FBI suspects that serial killers working as long-haul truckers are responsible for the slayings of hundreds of prostitutes, hitchhikers and stranded motorists whose bodies have been dumped near highways over the last three decades...
Little Brother is Watching
Posted on April 03, 2009Another average citizen catches abusive government officials on tape (via Kirkendall):
Jurors Aren't Human Lie Detectors
Posted on April 03, 2009This has been a common theme at Crime & Federalism: One of the most important take aways from his book is that there are no definitive signs of deceit itself, only clues that the emotions don?t fit the lines. Though most people are not good lie detectors, I will limit my discussion to jurors...
More on Brenda Morris' Prosecutorial Misconduct
Posted on April 02, 2009Brenda Morris, the lead attorney who committed prosecutorial misconduct in the Ted Stevens case, might have a history of prosecutorial misconduct. I'll investigate later. In the meantime, read this article: Two weeks before tax day, married lawyers Alan and Jean Brown were signing their names to the back of a familiar-looking green and yellow U...
Stevens' Case Motion to Dismiss: Must Read
Posted on April 01, 2009I've obtained a copy of the Motion to Dismiss the Department of Justice filed in the Ted Stevens prosecution. The motion itself is only two pages. You must read it. You may download it here. In the motion, DOJ admits that the prosecutors hid evidence from the defense...
Legal Experts Opine on Stevens Case Dismissal
Posted on April 01, 2009Today, citing prosecutorial misconduct, Attorney General Eric Holder has moved to dismiss the corruption charges against former Senator Ted Stevens. Thus far, legal experts are not impressed. Law professor Jonathan Turley, who has followed corruption in Alaska politics for over a decade, states: The Justice Department will be dropping all charges against former Senator Ted Steven (R...
DOJ to Dismiss Charges in Senator Ted Stevens Case
Posted on April 01, 2009Senator Ted Stevens was a corrupt man. He has probably broken as many laws as he shepherd through Congress. Finally, the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice was able to build a case against him. The case was strong. Unfortunately for the public, Ted Stevens will never see prison walls...
Wrongful Conviction Watch: Man Released From Prison After 12 Years
Posted on March 31, 2009DNA Evidence Frees Black Man Convicted Of Bear Attack
Legal Nonsense
Posted on March 31, 2009Only the law would make people hire an expensive expert witness to testify that poker is a game of skill rather than a game of luck. Whether the legal system is a game of luck or skill is perhaps a more interesting issue.
What is Incivility?
Posted on March 31, 2009An friend is defending a client who is facing a frivolous lawsuit. There is no debate that the lawsuit is frivolous. My friend has written very polite letters. Imagine, though, that he wrote the following: Hey f--k sticks. This lawsuit is s--t. You are worthless f---s...
Twitter-Bloggers
Posted on March 30, 2009I've recently started using Twitter. Most of the people I follow are bloggers. What do most of them Twitter about? Their blogs! The updates I read look like this: "I have a new blog post." That's all they do! Guys and gals, I already read your blogs. That's how I know you...
Crime and Credit Card Companies
Posted on March 30, 2009Imagine you hired me to work for you. We agreed that you would pay me $1,000 a month. I decided to change the terms of the deal without telling you; or by whispering my raise to you while you were on the phone with an angry client. I'd look inside your office, whisper, "Raise," and you'd shoo me away...
Mental Health and Civil Litigation
Posted on March 30, 2009Norm Pattis has a good post up about crazy litigants. He presents a problem that, alas, might not have a solution. Everyone knows that at least 90% of pro se litigants are nuts. They are called rabid pro se litigants for a reason. What do you do? Not let them file lawsuits? Would that be constitutional? Moral? Should judges mandate...
Power and Control
Posted on March 29, 2009An excellent post on the true nature of government. Here is what happens to an ordinary citizen who does not respect a cop's authoritas. This post also illustrates why it's logically impossible to be politically liberal but claim to care about freedom...
Lovelle Mixon/Cop Killer Rally
Posted on March 27, 2009This video segment raises many interesting issues: When the Klan or other white-sponsored hate groups march, there is usually a counter-march. Where was the counter-march during the pro-Lovelle Mixon rally? Should Al Sharpton and other leaders of the black community be condemned for not sponsoring a counter-march...
Lawyer-As-Insurance-Salesman
Posted on March 26, 2009There is a low probability that you will be convicted. This low probability event would, however, be catastrophic. We must consider the risks. Yes, yes. Uh-hum. Therefore, you need to purchase Trial Insurance. Unfortunately, it's only sold by the State...
Science and Eastern Religious Concepts
Posted on March 26, 2009Every (Western) religious person wants to reconcile science and religion. Why? I don't know. If faith is based on faith, then have faith. Seeking scientific validation is as unfaithful as it gets. Still, the fantastic irony is that science has not reconciled anything with Western religion...
Kiva.Org: The Unchartity
Posted on March 25, 2009You should consider "giving" to Kiva.org. It's not a charity. Rather, it's a program that does everything that the United States welfare system does not do: Encourages the poor to do something other than bilk taxpayers. You can check the site out here...
Cops Don´t Deserve a Defense?
Posted on March 24, 2009Tell a criminal defense lawyer that your client is accused of child rape, and that during the rape, an 8 year old had her vaginal wall torn. He won´t blink. He´ll probably make a joke. Tell him you´re representing a cop, and suddenly he gets righteous: "What's the matter with you?" The speaker is a good friend and a well-known...
The Non-Delegation Doctrine
Posted on March 24, 2009I´m not talking about the con law doctrine. I´m talking about delegating the final edit of your documents. Here is what can happen.
Is Libertarianism Based on Superstition
Posted on March 22, 2009Libertarians do not recognize the right to use physical force to compel another to do something. Yet the brilliant can justly convince the dull to sign contracts. How does this make sense? A moron does not use his free will to sign a contract. A moron has his will overcome...
Are We All Solipsists?
Posted on March 22, 2009If I said that only my mind exists, and that others do not have minds or their own will, people would look at me like I am nuts. Yet people are often saying: I cannot understand how someone could do that - where "that" is some horrific deed. What the person really means is: I could never imagine myself doing...
Blacks and AIDS
Posted on March 16, 2009As the epidemiological data shows, AIDS is primarily a disease afflicting blacks and homosexuals: More than 4 percent of blacks in the city are known to have HIV, along with almost 2 percent of Latinos and 1.4 percent of whites. More than three-quarters -- 76 percent -- of the HIV infected are black, 70 percent are men and 70 percent...
AIG Bonuses: So Sue Me!
Posted on March 16, 2009According to the latest spin, AIG must give out bonuses to avoid lawsuits: In a letter to Geithner dated Saturday, Liddy said outside lawyers had informed the company that AIG had contractual obligations to make the bonus payments and could face lawsuits if it did not do so...
Frederick J. Hanna & Associates Under Investigation
Posted on March 16, 2009Frederick J. Hanna & Associates is, based on all accounts, a scum bag law firm that collects on debt that does not exist or is not owed. In other words, they are thieves. The Georgia Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs has begun investigating Frederick J...
Now on Twitter
Posted on March 16, 2009I haven't decided if Twitter is a time suck; a productively tool; a great way to keep in touch; or all or none of the above. I'm trying it out. You can add me here.
John Stossel's Bailouts and Bull Special
Posted on March 15, 200920/20's John Stossel does a great job with a lot of issues here.
Norm Pattis Gets Prosecutor Cleared In Grievance Case
Posted on March 15, 2009Congratulations, Norm.
Connecticut Lawyer Brief Bank
Posted on March 15, 2009This is a really cool idea: Effective March 1, 2009, section 67-2(K) of the Rules of Appellate Procedure requires all counsel-represented parties who file a paper brief in the Supreme Court also to file an electronic copy of the brief with the court. Through a cooperative arrangement with the Judicial Branch, the Appellate Advocacy Committee will post the brief on...
Another Cruel Joke on Humanity
Posted on March 15, 2009Your brain is strongest from ages 22-27. But you haven't lived long enough to actually know anything. Isn't life grand? I'm reminded of the expression: Youth is wasted on the young. When you're young, you worry about adult problems, or want to "grow up...
Juliet Sorensen is an Unethical Prosecutor
Posted on March 13, 2009Judge Richard Posner explains why in United States v. Farinella (which is itself a great illustration of overcriminalization at play) (via Eugene Volokh). In the opinion, Judge Posner notes: "We asked the government's lawyer at argument what an appropriate sanction for the prosecutor?s misconduct might be...
The Upside of a Surveillance Society
Posted on March 13, 2009Who would have thought that it was Big Brother who should have feared the Surveillance Society?
Bernie Madoff is Free
Posted on March 13, 2009So argues Norm Pattis. He makes good points - at least regarding federal prison time. Federal prison is not Club Fed, but it's not that bad. This isn't due to a kind-and-gentle federal government. It's due to the prison population. In the federal system, you tend to be incarerated with druggies, crooks, and scammers rather than rapists and murders...
Credit Card Companies Are Thieves
Posted on March 13, 2009The latest credit-card scam is to change your available credit limit to an amount less than what you currently owe. Details here. This allows credit card companies to charge you over-limit fees. They change the rules in the middle of the game. You were fine one day...
Symanetc/Norton Claims PIFTS.EXE was "Error"
Posted on March 11, 2009I don't know who would believe this. Sheep, I guess. Norton has admitted that it allows the FBI to install spyware on Norton-protected [sic] computers. I guess people will need to use Symanetc products at their own risk.