Legal Commentary

If they meant him to take the day off, they should've called it "No Labor Day"

Posted on September 01, 2008
While many of us were in full kick-back-and-relax mode, Jaime Spencer was hard at work preparing Blawg Review #175, which is now available at his Austin DWI Lawyer blog. Spencer posts the best of last week's legal bogging, including a few thoughts on paying for the privilege of being a new associate, how to wrangle a gubernatorial pardon in Texas, and the FBI's contributions to jail overcrowding by arresting a blogger who jumped the gun by streaming tracks from a long-overdue Guns N' Roses album...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (182)

Posted on August 29, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Time's Real Clear Politics blog (from Tuesday, August 26; link good at time of posting):Former Texas Rep. Charlie Wilson . . . was speaking at an anti-war rally when he, um, flubbed a line:"We should be led by Osama bin Laden," he said, then quickly corrected himself...

The "Redeem Team" is so last week; the "No-Theme Team" is the new hotness.

Posted on August 28, 2008
D. Todd Smith hosts this week's Blawg Review #174 at his Texas Appellate Law Blog. Smith's review is a throwback of sorts to the early days of Blawg Review when hosts simply collected the best legal blogging of the previous week without packaging it (or, as in the cases of my own Blawg Reviews, overpackaging it) in a themed presentation...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (181) . . . The Sequel!

Posted on August 22, 2008
This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Boston Globe Olympics Blog (from Wednesday, August 20; link good at time of posting):After the USA men's basketball team blew out Spain recently, the majority of the Spaniards wanted nothing to do with the American media...

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TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (181)

Posted on August 22, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, August 19; link good at time of posting):A Kentucky sheriff drove 4,100 miles to California to pick up a fugitive, then realized when he got back he had the wrong guy...

Note to self: stop calling, texting, e-mailing, and IMing anyone in Britain.

Posted on August 19, 2008
Might as well quit accessing any British websites as well. From The Register:The government is pressing ahead with plans to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a massive central silo for all UK communications data, The Register has learned.Home Office civil servants are working on plans for the database under the banner of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP)...

Let's all drink to NIMBYism.

Posted on August 19, 2008
Reason's Hit & Run blog praises the "Amethyst Initiative", a petition by dozens of college presidents to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. The initiative signatories suggest that "twenty-one is not working":A culture of dangerous, clandestine ?binge-drinking??often conducted off-campus?has developed...

Unfortunately, there's more than one albatross for these mariners to contend with.

Posted on August 18, 2008
Let's see here. It's mid-August, the Mariners are 30½ games back in the American League West, and the authoritative U.S.S. Mariner has called the franchise "The Worst Run Organization in Baseball". I'm starting to think that perhaps that late-season run at the pennant is just not going to materialize this season after all...

Thankfully, he skipped the painful post-swim interview with Andrea Kremer.

Posted on August 18, 2008
R. David Donaghue (as opposed to your David Donaghue) hosts this week's Blawg Review #173 at his Chicago IP Litigation blog.Like much of the world's, Donaghue's attention last week was focused on Michael Phelps and his unprecedented eight gold medals in a single Olympics...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (180) . . . The Sequel!

Posted on August 15, 2008
This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Gizmodo blog (from Tuesday, August 12; link good at time of posting):An inflatable catastrophe second only to the Hindenburg disaster has occurred in Bern Switzerland at the Paul Klee Center art museum...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (180)

Posted on August 15, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the With Leather blog (from Monday, August 11; link good at time of posting):Michael Phelps kept his hopes for eight gold medals alive, as the underdog Americans scored a seemingly impossible come-from-behind win in the 4x100 free relay...

West London Man... Home and Dry.

Posted on August 14, 2008
Charon QC has gathered together all of his brilliant "West London Man" posts/podcasts (thus far) on a single page at his Insitelaw Magazine site. Now that George and his family have found a comfortable home on the web, don't miss this opportunity to avail yourself of one of the best characters in British social satire (this side of Jeeves at least).

Random Thought (12)

Posted on August 14, 2008
If I ever win an Olympic gold medal, I'll have it bronzed so that I can keep it forever.[Previous Thought]

How to host Blawg Review without getting torched.

Posted on August 14, 2008
The Beijing Olympics are not yet even a week completed, but Jonathan Hyman is all over it, hosting an Olympics-themed Blawg Review #172 at his Ohio Employer's Law Blog. Highlights include an amazing opening ceremony, an historic finish in men's relay swimming, and...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (179)

Posted on August 08, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, August 4; link good at time of posting):Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has apologized after accidentally recommending a potentially deadly plant in organic salads...

The Virgin Queen

Posted on August 07, 2008
Victoria Pynchon hosts Blawg Review #171 this week at The IP ADR Blog. She's made much of this effort being her first time hosting the carnival of legal blogging and to emphasize her point, she's styled this review as all about virginity:If intellectual property had a theme song it would have to be "Like a Virgin...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (178)

Posted on August 01, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Tuesday, July 29; link good at time of posting):Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said...

Worst Consumer in America

Posted on July 28, 2008
Over at the excellent Consumerist blog, after months of exciting bracket-tourney-style action, the blog's readership has finally awarded the "Lucky Golden Shit" award to the "Worst Company in America". In the final, my mortgage company, Countrywide, decisively defeated my cable and internet company, Comcast...

I only made it through ten amendments before I ran out of fingers.

Posted on July 28, 2008
Some critics might suggest that blogging requires only an opinion and the ability to type (and perhaps that blawgging only takes those two plus some legal coursework), but Scott Greenfield consistently provides counterexamples at his Simple Justice blog...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (177) . . . The Sequel!

Posted on July 25, 2008
This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, July 22; link good at time of posting):Three men suspected of stealing from a Goodwill store in Cookeville ran out of gas before making it out of the parking lot, police say...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (177)

Posted on July 25, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, July 23; link good at time of posting):An Australian man's dare went horribly wrong when he tried to play chicken with cars on a freeway wearing only his underwear...

Sometimes a whisper is a shout.

Posted on July 21, 2008
Whisper, a branding strategy blog, hosts Blawg Review #169 this week. If branding strategy seems to you like a counterintuitive theme for a collection of the best legal blogging of the past week, Whisper sets you straight straightaway:Lawyers, and law firms, have always been brands...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (176) . . . The Sequel!

Posted on July 18, 2008
This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Friday, July 18; link good at time of posting):An Indian man who took an impersonator to court to get a divorce faces legal action after his real wife found out, lawyers said Friday...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (176)

Posted on July 18, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Wednesday, July 16; link good at time of posting):A New Yorker was jailed for 30 months on Tuesday after being convicted for spamming 1.2 million AOL members with junk mail...

In the meantime, will someone please buy Mr. Heller a revolver?

Posted on July 17, 2008
Dick Heller, a resident of the District of Columbia, was denied a permit to possess a handgun for self-defense. He sued the District, seeking to invalidate, or at least to limit, the District's categorical ban on personal ownership of handguns. He was ultimately successful; the United States Supreme Court recently found in his favor...

Gonna make a jailbreak...

Posted on July 14, 2008
AC/DC had their '74 Jailbreak, released after singer Bon Scott's death, and it's still a great record. Steve McQueen made a Great Escape a decade or so before then and it inspires whenever it comes on. Only an Eighteenth Century French prison break gets its own national holiday, however...

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (175)

Posted on July 11, 2008
This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Huntsville Times (via QuizLaw) (from Wednesday, July 9; links good at time of posting):According to police, Garry Michael Wilson drove a stolen BMW Z3 just two blocks Saturday night before the car's manual transmission apparently couldn't take any more grinding punishment...

Random Thought (11)

Posted on July 09, 2008
It would be irresponsible for me to suggest that the weather today is as hot as Hades. I've not been to Hades since that legal ethics seminar a few years back, so I have no current information concerning its climate.[Previous Thought]

Surreality Programming

Posted on July 08, 2008
I'm a regular listener and great fan of Mike Semple Piggot's various podcasting productions, including the daily news program at the Insitelaw Magazine site, his ongoing Charon podcast series, and his "West London Man" satiric commentaries. I highly recommend them all...

Security is Everyone's Business

Posted on July 08, 2008
When I was young, I remember going to my father's office at one of the military bases where we were stationed and seeing a poster which said "Security is Everyone's Business". It was the 70s, so there was probably a "Hang in there, baby" cat poster alongside it, but I don't recall...

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