My friend "Gideon" (of A Public Defender fame) asked an intriguing question on Twitter: @tbuhl's twitter profile proclaims "no tweets are publishable". What does that mean? By "not publishable," I suspected that "investigative journalist" Teri Buhl (you'll see the reason for the doubt quotes in a moment) meant "not worth publishing," which is ironic and funny because posting on Twitter is publication. But no. Buhl responded to

This is cool. (H/t Nathaniel Burney; buy his book.) If you are close to the car in front of you and the brake lights of that car go on, you have to hit your brakes—your default reaction has to be "brake until I understand what is going on." If the other driver is braking for no good reason (as a rule of thumb, people are bad drivers)

Photography has been recognized as a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. While conceding that, the court of appeals nevertheless concluded that the statute “regulates a person’s intent in creating a visual record and not the contents of the record itself.” But that conclusion does not necessarily exempt the statute from the First Amendment’s protections. The Supreme Court has recognized that the First Amendment includes, as

I've been fighting a battle against Texas Penal Code Section 33.021, the Texas Online Solicitation of a Child statute, for some time now. In one pending case, I was brought in by trial counsel to be the "law man," filing a pretrial writ of habeas corpus alleging that the statute was overbroad as written, was void for vagueness, and violated the "dormant Commerce Clause." The trial court

The thing that has always bugged me most about the business of law is potential clients making appointments, and then failing to post. When someone fails to appear for an appointment, I have wasted my time, which raises my blood pressure and makes me cranky. I have, through the years, contemplated or tried various solutions—don't make appointments more than 24 hours out; require a credit-card number to

Geraldo G. Acosta: 255 juvenile cases / 387 misdemeanor cases/ 278 felony cases / 4.1 times the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommended public-defender caseload (i.e. 200 juvenile cases or 400 misdemeanor cases or 150 felony cases per lawyer). David L. Garza: 599 misdemeanor cases / 295 felony cases / 3.5 times the recommended caseload. Ricardo N. Gonzalez: 444 misdemeanor cases / 63 felony cases

Jury selection, properly conducted, is an unscripted improvisational exercise. In Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch writes of the need for "technique to burn" to an improviser: Galurnphing ensures that we rernain on the upside of the law of requisite variety. This fundanmental law of nature states that a system intended to handle x amount of information must be able to lake on at

Recalling one of the proudest moments of my career. I'd been practicing law for about five months. My client, who had been badly "hometowned" in court in Palestine, Texas, in the Piney Woods, had moved from there to Houston with her child. I moved to transfer the case to Houston while there was a motion to enforce pending against her in Palestine, so transfer would have deprived

(Via Liberally Lean From The Land of Dairy Queen.)

This came in today: Hello to all,   This is an announcement regarding ASA Peter A. Barone. On January 7, 2013 Peter A. Barone finished his final defense for his Ph.D. and was officially announced as Dr. Peter A. Barone. Dr. Barone spent 5+ years obtaining his degree and would like to request that during formal court proceedings that you please refer to him by his proper