It started with a couple of sentences on Houston criminal-defense firm Stradley Chernoff & Alford's website: The jail personnel, especially in Harris County, seem to take a perverse pleasure in making the jail visit as unpleasant as possible. Their actions sometimes border on the sadistic, and the client who is finally released on bail, fatigued, dehydrated and humiliated, vows never to go back. Pretty innocuous, I'd say,

To begin with, Judge Blackburn did not order Fricosu to decrypt her hard drive. Why not? The obvious answer: because the government didn't ask him to. What did the government ask him to do? It asked him to order Ms. Fricosu "to produce the unencrypted contents of the computer." (In fact, the government asked for a writ under the All Writs Act, 28 USC 1651, requiring Ms. Fricosu

"Blake Jamerson" (IP 75.148.128.34) writes in response to Andy Nolen: Total Fraud?: Mr. Nolen is a wonderful attorney. Not only does he know the law but lives by the law. He helped my family and I with some valuable insight on my brother’s case. He returned all my calls and would call me if he was running late to court. I understand not every one person is alike

In the last couple of weeks we learned that two more of the Rakofsky v. Internet defendants had settled with Rakofsky—not with money, apparently, but by abasing themselves, their codefendants, and the First Amendment. LisaLori Palmieri, who on 6 April 2011 wrote a dreadful piece of blatant marketing dreck (archive.org, via comments here) about Rakofsky's failure in the Deaner case… It seems that neither Rakofsky’s law degree

One: Murray Newman reports that Pat Lykos has been subpoenaed to testify before the 185th Grand Jury. My guess is that it's unprecedented for a Texas grand jury to subpoena a sitting District Attorney. Getting subpoenaed is bad. Taking the Fifth would be political suicide. Others might take the Fifth as an obstruction or delay tactic, but if Pat Lykos takes the FIfth, it's because she really

Once I decide who the best candidate for Harris County District Attorney is, I'm not going to endorse him or her publicly, because I think my endorsement might have a negative effect. By the same token, the best endorsement Mike Anderson has received so far, to me, is Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill's public support for Pat Lykos.

"Fearless, relentless, and righteous." That's how the Chicago Sun-Times described my friend Dave Boyle in his obituary. Dave got to Vietnam just in time for the Tet Offensive in 1968. He didn't talk much about his time in Vietnam, but he always planned to go back some day and tour the country in peacetime by motorcycle. Dave was what a Republican presidential candidate would sneeringly call a

© 2011 Ruben Bollin @rubenbolling

In the voting on Popehat for Censorious Asshat Of The Year, I am torn between Thedala Magee and her lawyer Vicki Roberts, and Joseph Rakofsky. In any other year, Marc Stephens would be a contender, but what he did was, basically, pretend to be a lawyer like Vicki Roberts or Joseph Rakofsky. It wouldn't be fair to Roberts or Rakofsky to give the award to wannabe Stephens when they,