I'm feeling uninspired. Here are some of the posts I've thought of in the last few months, titled, and then not written: Josh Karton in Houston The Commerce Clause The Problem of the Working Poor Lanyard Nation Of Course It's Not an Individual Right! Here's the deal: pick a title and suggest three or four words or phrases (PG or G rated, please) for me to use

(I write blog posts offline in Ecto. When I have a new idea for a post, I create a new post and title it, then set it aside until I feel like writing it. This one's been brewing for a while, so I wanted to get a couple of thoughts down in bits and bytes even though they're far from complete or even well-developed.) Criminal defense, which

Pat Lykos, clearly the less-qualified candidate for Harris County District Attorney, has beaten Kelly Siegler, the champion of the Office's old guard, in the Republican primary. And so the Holmes-Rosenthal era ends: not with a bang but with a whimper. We defense lawyers have reached no consensus on whether this will improve our lives or our clients. But Harris County's Assistant District Attorneys feel that this bodes

Today Harris County Commissioner's Court approved the creation by the County's Management Services Department of a study and recommendation on the feasibility of establishing a Public Defender's Office in Harris County. If the study reveals that a PD's Office will provide a cost savings over the current ad hoc appointment system (Grits agrees with me that it will), the PD's Office is likely to start small, providing

From the agenda: Request for discussion and possible action for Management Services to provide a study and recommendations on the feasibility of establishing a Public Defender Office in Harris County.

Georgia public defender S.C. Ruffey's comment about his fondness for the Uniform Commercial Code brought to mind a special kind of character that pops up from time to time in a criminal law practice. [Digression: Austin criminal-defense lawyer Jamie Spencer talks about "how to rank high on Google's natural results." I have heard -- and it makes sense -- that a page that uses the phrase "Houston

Are you passionate about the law? Do you think the law is a beautiful thing? Do you adore it? Not I. The law is a street fight. It's trench warfare. There's nothing beautiful about it. It's inelegant, messy and dangerous. Sometimes the right side loses. Often everyone loses. Our justice system's the worst possible -- except for (to crib shamelessly from Churchill) all the others that have

I'm glad the Harris County DA's race is almost over. Partisan politics and offices in the criminal justice really shouldn't mix. In this election, both sides have tried to deceive the public. Over at the Elect Kelly Siegler Kelly Blog you can read about Pat Lykos's deceptions; here's one from Siegler's campaign. Kelly Siegler's campaign literature says that Pat Lykos placed 70 "child sex predators" on deferred

PJ wrote, in response to a comment of mine to The Only Viable Threat: I will take exception to your claiming deterrence of others as a legitimate purpose of punishment. It ought to be considered unethical to harm people for the purpose of teaching other people something. For example, if a judge determines that, based on the circumstances of the offense and a defendant's background, he deserves

By a margin of more than 11 to one, Defending People choose freedom over safety as the thing they value most. [poll=2] AHCL, at the Elect Kelly Siegler Blog can be forgiven a bit of snarkiness when she reads: Defending People is about protecting the people, one at a time, from the only viable threat to their liberty: their government. ... "They hate us for our freedom," the President says, justifying our embroilment in a war without end that in turn serves as rationale for the curtailment of our rights -- to free expression ("There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do…."), to be secure in our homes and persons (the malevolently-named USA-PATRIOT act), to habeas corpus, counsel, due process and jury trial (Guantanamo) . . . .