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Recent Blog Posts
Video Special: More of the Same
Like the man says, I have no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism, but maybe this was amusing the first time:
It was probably not as funny the second time:
And you'd hope this guy would have flat-out known better:
Just Say “Gosh, No!” to Dullards in High Office
If I need to have my spleen removed, I want someone truly exceptional doing the job, and not Jo Sixpack. I want the surgeon whose brilliance and creativity and education make him or her stand out from the crowd and even arouse the envy and resentment of ordinary people. Does that make me an elitist? If so, I'm okay with that. I'll let the non-elitists have the surgeon with the 100 IQ.
High elected office is no different. I spend enough time dealing with dullard elected officials in the courthouse that I know that I don't want any more in the White House. I don't want my elected officials to say "eye-rack" for Iraq. Or "eye-ran" for Iran. Or "nucular". I don't want a Vice President who thinks that what that office needs, after eight years of Dick Cheney, is more power. Or one who can't name a single news periodical (seriously: "all of them"?). Or one who can't name a single Supreme Court case (other than Roe v. Wade... and Roe v. Wade).
The Bill of Rights: that's where you'll find our freedoms, and it'd be very hard for outsiders to take it away. The last people to have a chance? Maybe the British in 1814? Arguably the Nazis in WWII? Certainly not the Viet Cong or the people of Iraq or Al Qaeda.
More on those Ominous Black Boxes
Reader Trafficnerd gave us a few links to pages about the HPD's DEA-funded PlateScan Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems.
None of them, oddly enough, mention the DEA funding that Officer Friendly told me about.
Here, though, is Houston HIDTA (High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force) director Stan Furce's "So, you want an LPR" article from the August issue of Law Officer Magazine.
A highlight:
The license data LPRs collect can be stored for an indeterminablelength of time, limited only by the server containing the information.Some LPRs temporarily store information in the camera housing orin a nearby server, but all will eventually download it into a largerserver, either automatically or manually. Investigators from alldisciplines can then query that server to learn if a certain VOI was ina particular area at a specified time and, perhaps, who was drivingit.
Abe Maslow, Jury Consultant
From Simple Justice:
People are scared to death of what will happen to them and their families, and they struggle to make sense of the mass confusion in Washington, Wall Street and the thousand pundit voices that tell a completely difference story every 30 seconds.And so, in times of turmoil, we return to the work of Abraham Maslow, the Hierarchy of Needs. When people are deeply concerned that they will be unable to put food on their table, heat their homes, keep their homes, drive to work (if they have a job), obtain medical treatment for their children, guess what they aren't worried about: Justice. You. Your client.
Isn't that, after all, what the government is trying to capitalize on when it seeks to make people afraid? If the government succeeds in making jurors afraid, then the defense's arguments based on love, esteem, or self-actualization are addressing only secondary psychological needs.
I am Highly Amused
A message from one of my Facebook friends, a fellow MOB trumpet player who is now a lawyer an attorney in Chicago:
Today is the second post by you about jail or court in a few weeks. If you have a serious issue and need help finding good counsel pls let me know.
Big Brother on Wheels
According to Officer Friendly, those are DEA-supplied license-plate reading cameras mounted to the trunk of the patrol car.
I don't like it, but it's good for business - my business - I suppose.
Of Berries, Durians, and Jean Valjean
While both a prosecutor and a defense lawyer will bend over backwards to help their friends, the fundamental character difference between a prosecutor and a defense lawyer is that the defense lawyer will bend over backwards to help yours.
This morning a prosecutor admitted reading my blog (welcome!) and protested that I generalize too much about prosecutors, and that not all of them are judgmental right-wing death-penalty-loving fans of government. Some of them, she said, are touchy-feely left-wing tree-hugging fans of government. Fair enough.
I generalize. All animals generalize. If a species had to taste a berry from every holly bush in order to form the general rule that holly berries are poisonous, it wouldn't survive long. Humans are at the top of the food chain in part because we're better at generalizing, and more conscious of our generalizations, than the rest of the animals. Without well-developed generalization skills we probably wouldn't have made it through the ice age, much less to the moon.
Biggest. Blank. Check. Ever!
Seven Hundred Billion Dollars and xx/oo cents.
I can't understand why it's better for the U.S. taxpayer to buy more than two-thirds of a trillion dollars of bad debt, than to fill in the hole that the banks dug for themselves, with the banks still at the bottom of it. It's clearly above my pay grade, but maybe a reader who didn't drop economics in college can explain it to me.
I don't know high finance, but I do know accountability. And this bill includes none:
Sec. 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
"What authority?", you might well ask.
The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act....
Spring 1987
This is a picture from the American Embassy School of New Delhi, India's class of 1987 Senior Skip Day. Facebook is awesome.
(Again, the guy on the far right is not me.)
Not Just a Little Bit Overboard.
26th Street Bar Association and Bad Court Thingy both wrote about an Illinois lawyer, who's been suspended from the practice of law for 15 months for accepting $534 worth of nude dances as partial payment for $7,000 worth of legal fees in 2001 and 2002.
The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission found that agreeing to give a current client credit against her legal bills in exchange for performing striptease dances for him (which the lawyer admitted) was "reprehensible in and of itself."
If that were all this case was about, it'd make a good story (the story that you've read about); I'd be writing about the prudishness of the IARDC, how it was interfering with the client's ability contract with counsel, and how there should be no legal distinction between plying one's lawful trade in exchange for money that is then exchanged for legal services, and a barter transaction like this one, however imprudent.
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