I'd like to congratulate the lawyers who prosecute, and the judges who sentence them, for the "choices" that they've made that put them at the top and my clients at the bottom. . . . and, for that matter, anyone else who is smugly self-righteous about his lot in life. Not all of these will apply to all of you; take those that do. Congratulations for choosing

MSNBC says that Houston is the fourth best American city to live in. (H/T Tory Gattis's Houston Strategies blog, which I just happened upon. Tory is a Rice classmate of mine.) I'm mildly surprised. I've long said that Houston is the Promised Land for criminal-defense lawyers (despite, or perhaps because of what U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee calls "the many misgivings surrounding the Harris County judicial system")

HCSO Blog (tagline: Only the smart people are frustrated). [Edit: The anonymous author links to me because of my intelligence. I think I've got that right.]

The following is a guest post, emailed to me in response to one of my Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)-related posts (possibly this one). I nearly fell out of my chair on reading this post. Due to the large number of TX NTL Guard soldiers and large numbers of active Army from El Paso and Fort Hood you are dead right on the sheer volume of possible problems

"I'll show him!" That's the retributive impulse in a nutshell, isn't it? The desire, when someone angers us by making us feel a loss of control or a perceived loss of dignity, to regain control and dignity by "teaching him a lesson"? It's the impulse driving lots of human misbehavior -- control and dignity probably come in third and fourth after money and sex as motivators (for

This post, "about how Chicago police were noting that the 10% increase in homicide this year compared over last is possibly attributable to the lack of aggressive policing, due to increased police misconduct lawsuits", on Chicago criminal-defense lawyer Rob Deters's 26th St. Bar Association blog, brought to mind this Simple Justice post, about former DOJ lawyer John Yoo's contention that if government officials risk being liable in

The ABA's Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System: 1. The public defense function, including the selection, funding, and payment of defense counsel, is independent. 2. Where the caseload is sufficiently high, the public defense delivery system consists of both a defender office and the active participation of the private bar. 3. Clients are screened for eligibility, and defense counsel is assigned and notified of appointment,

From the Search Terms Files, the question that forms the title of this post: "Can a DUI be expunged in Texas?" First: in most parts of the U.S., the crime of driving while one's capacities are diminished by the ingestion of alcohol is described as DUI (driving under the influence). In Texas it's DWI; "DUI" in Texas is the crime committed by a minor who drives with

I used to get nocturnal telephone calls from young ladies looking for this guy.

In his Independence Day post, Scott Greenfield writes: Americans will not be deeply concerned about freedom in our 233rd year. They will be concerned about eating, jobs, gas and keeping a roof over their children's heads. Abraham Maslow explains why higher order concerns take a back seat to basic needs. For most of its history, America did a superb job of feeding and housing its citizens. But