Defending People

Feb­ru­ary 9th was the 100th anniver­sary of the fed­eral “war on drugs”, writes Windy­Pun­dit in 100 Years of FAIL. This week South Car­olina cops did their part to expose the WOD for a pathetic farce. Radley Balkoff (The Agi­ta­tor) writes in The Michael Phelps Witch Hunt Gets Surreal:

Rich­land County, South Car­olina Sheriff’s Depart­ment went out and arrested eight peo­ple on mar­i­juana charges allegedly asso­ci­ated with the now-famous bong photo of Olympic swim­mer Michael Phelps.

Hous­ton pros­e­cu­tor “Arthur Seaton” (Sat­ur­day Night and Mon­day Morn­ing) never one to mince words, says of this, “God­dammit This is Stu­pid.”

Part of the WOD has been an explo­sion in government’s asset-forfeiture pow­ers. Scott Hen­son (Grits for Break­fast) doubts that any­one involved in the asset for­fei­ture scan­dal in Tenaha TX will be dis­ci­plined for this road­side piracy under color of law; he sug­gests that remov­ing the profit motive in for­fei­ture actions would go some way toward pre­vent­ing the sit­u­a­tion from recur­ring else­where.

Another side of the WOD is mass incar­cer­a­tion and fel­o­niza­tion of working-age Amer­i­cans. It’s hard for a con­victed felon to get work; Gideon (A Pub­lic Defender) cheers the City of New Haven, Conneticut’s deci­sion to remove the require­ment that job appli­cants indi­cate whether they are con­victed felons: “What this does is gives ex-felons a fight­ing chance at reintegration.”

The WOD is also largely respon­si­ble for the crush­ing bur­den on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, chron­i­cled by Gideon (Pub­lic Defender Stuff) in Bud­get Cuts Would Put Sys­tem in Jeop­ardy, and — through over­in­car­cer­a­tion — on soci­ety in gen­eral, as observed by Fresno criminal-defense lawyer Rick Horowitz (Prob­a­ble Cause) in Are Amer­i­cans Just Mean and Stu­pid? Robert Guest (Dal­las Crim­i­nal Defense Lawyer Blog) says it’s time for the Dal­las Morn­ing News to aban­don its drug war apologetics.

Charles Dickens’s birth­day was last week, but the news of profit-motivated “jus­tice” that Bobby Fred­er­ick (South Car­olina Crim­i­nal Defense Blog) brought us this week has a Dick­en­sian aspect: Penn­syl­va­nia judges to plead guilty today to charges of jail­ing kids for cash. Volokh names the crooked judges (Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Cona­han) “to insure that their names do not dis­ap­pear from the List of the Wicked” and Waco criminal-defense lawyer Wal­ter Reaves uses that case to ask What to Do When the Sys­tem Breaks Down?

No amount of money can com­pen­sate those chil­dren who shouldn’t have been sent to deten­tion. Soci­ety is prob­a­bly going to have to bear the costs for some; no doubt there are some who will be lead down the wrong path because of what hap­pened. Kids are espe­cially prone to becom­ing what peo­ple think of them. If soci­ety thinks they are a fail­ure, the ten­dency is to become one.

On Feb­ru­ary 10th, 1763, France and Eng­land signed the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War and gave Canada to Eng­land. Eng­lish IP bar­ris­ter Geeklawyer is vis­it­ing Canada this week; he writes about Canada’s vaunted mild­ness in Polite Cana­di­ans, eh?

Lon Chaney, Jr. was born on Feb­ru­ary 10th, 1906. Chaney was famous for his por­tray­als of movie mon­sters, among them the son of Drac­ula. Ken (Pope­hat) tells us about a Min­nesota Politi­cian in the movie-monster spirit. Jonathon Sharkey, founder of the Vam­pires, Witches, and Pagans Party (cam­paign slo­gan: “Impale George Bush”), is in trou­ble for allegedly stalk­ing a 16-year-old girl:

She told police that “in a des­per­ate attempt” to get him to leave her alone, she had e-mailed him that she was a mem­ber of an elite vam­pire hunter soci­ety and that con­tin­u­ing their rela­tion­ship would put him in dan­ger. Her father told police he talked to Sharkey, but Sharkey con­tin­ued to call the girl and write let­ters to her parents.

In TBI Com­pli­ca­tion No. 763, Bro­ken Brain — Bril­liant Mind (not a blawg, but reg­u­lar read­ers know that I am a mas­ter of the dis­parate, and extremely inter­ested in trau­matic brain injury (TBI) to boot), teaches us that one effect of TBI is defense­less­ness to energy-sucking “vampires.”

Doug Berman (Sen­tenc­ing Law and Pol­icy) tells us of the Sev­enth Circuit’s rever­sal of a sen­tence based in part on the trial judge’s belief (pow­ered by vam­piric telepa­thy?) of what the defen­dant would have done had he been on bond:

The Sev­enth Cir­cuit in Eng­land finds error in a dis­trict court’s deci­sion to increase a defendant’s sen­tence sig­nif­i­cantly based on the “court’s belief that the defen­dant would have com­mit­ted the crime” of attempted mur­der if given the oppor­tu­nity to be free on bond.… [B]y my read­ing, if the pros­e­cu­tion can come for­ward with more evi­dence to sup­port the claim that the defen­dant here would have com­mit­ted attempted mur­der, the Sev­enth Cir­cuit would be fine with the sen­tence imposed.

Berman refers in the post to the movie Minor­ity Report; such allu­sions are an excel­lent way to relate the dry stuff of appel­late opin­ions to actual expe­ri­ence. R.J. MacReady (Texas Court of Crim­i­nal Appeals Blog) looks at a Roberts dis­sent à la mode Spillane and won­ders, in When Judges Get Spirit Fin­gers, whether judges should be more cre­ative in their opin­ion writing:

By being more cre­ative, the ideas are com­mu­ni­cated more effec­tively. A well-turned phrase can res­onate with the reader. It may help him or her under­stand a par­tic­u­lar issue on mul­ti­ple lev­els and make the res­o­lu­tion eas­ier to remem­ber.
.…
[But] at the numer­ous sem­i­nars where judges sit on pan­els to tell me what they are look­ing for I’ve never once heard any­thing like: “Please be more hip. If you get a chance, pat­tern your state­ment of facts after a Mike Ham­mer story. The books, not the Armand Assante movie or the Stacey Keach TV show. And if you can work in a Bob Dylan quote we’ll give you a free T-shirt from our court’s gift shop. Shouldn’t be that hard, they did it in Bat­tlestar Galac­tica.” If that type of thing dam­ages a lawyer’s cred­i­bil­ity, doesn’t it do twice the dam­age to the judges?

In a sep­a­rate dis­cus­sion, Berman and Jamie Spencer (Austin Crim­i­nal Defense Lawyer) con­sider why defense wins in sen­tenc­ing appeals go unpub­lished so fre­quently. Berman won­ders if it’s a con­spir­acy, while Jamie is more blunt: “the appeals courts are full of a bunch of lilly-livered chickenshits.”

On Feb­ru­ary 10th, 2009, the blaw­gos­phere began to respond to Nordstrom’s bul­ly­ing of a small busi­ness over the trade­mark “Beck­ons.” Marc Ran­dazza (Legal Satyri­con) gave us a heads-up, Seat­tle trade­mark lawyer Michael Atkins cov­ered the story in Infor­ma­tion­Week Blog Slams Nord­strom for Alleged TTAB Con­duct, and Windy­Pun­dit, Scott Green­field, and Brian Tan­nebaum (among oth­ers) wrote about Nordstrom’s bul­ly­ing. Then Nord­strom wrote a lying non-apology to Infor­ma­tion­Week, and Green­field called them on it. Nord­strom would do well to heed Bill Marler’s (Mar­lerBlog) advice to Peanut Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­ica: Some­times it is Bet­ter to Say “I’m Sorry”: “Some­times it is bet­ter to get ahead of a train that is about to hit you.”

Feb­ru­ary 11th, 1847, was the birth­day of Thomas Edi­son, who held 1,093 patents; J. Dou­glas Miller (Small Busi­ness IP Pro­tec­tion and Man­age­ment) this week answers the ques­tion, “How do I get a patent?” and Brett Trout (BlawgIT) hon­ors Edison’s birth­day and Black His­tory Month (which Mar­cia L. McCormick at Prawfs­Blawg thinks might be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive) at the same time by list­ing his Top 10 African Amer­i­can Inven­tors, includ­ing Lewis Latimer, who invented the car­bon fil­a­ment that made the light bulb prac­ti­cal. Austin criminal-defense lawyer Jamie Spencer hon­ors his dad, a math and sci­ence teacher and Edison-like “mad sci­en­tist” with What Your Par­ents Did (or Do). In a related vein, Hous­ton DUI lawyer Paul Kennedy wrote with an appro­pri­ate degree of pride about his –year-old daughter’s descrip­tion of Paul’s job in The Defense Rests: Out of the mouths of babes:

Some of the kids said their dads worked in an office, worked on the com­puter or worked for money. When the teacher asked my daugh­ter what I did, my daugh­ter told her that I was an attor­ney who helped get peo­ple out of jail.

Among other things, Thomas Edi­son invented the light bulb. This week we learned from Vir­ginia pros­e­cu­tor Ken Lam­mers (Crim­Law) that Vir­ginia keeps its jurors in the dark: “lawyers in Vir­ginia aren’t sup­posed to tell the jury the law we’re apply­ing the facts to in the voir dire or open­ing state­ments.” Ken’s solu­tion: give jurors a jury charge at the begin­ning of trial.

Inven­tors have given us myr­iad high-tech ways to com­mu­ni­cate. Dan Hull (What About Paris) would like us to use fewer of them:

What hap­pened to voices, vibes, faces, bod­ies, winks, hand ges­tures, touch­ing another’s hand or shoul­der impul­sively, stares, grins, frowns, hand-written thank you notes, human elec­tric­ity, NOT-typing, non-virtual jok­ing, yelling, rag­ging and flirt­ing, occa­sional con­fronta­tion, inti­macy and the “god-in-the-room” magic that starts with two breath­ing humans in one 3-D place? Or at least on the phone?

Patrick (Pope­hat), in Thoughts On Receiv­ing An Email Attach­ment, Sent To Me In Error, describes a mis­take that cer­tainly wouldn’t have been made had the sender been com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a less vir­tual medium:

A cou­ple of points:  You described Plain­tiff Jones, based on her depo­si­tion appear­ance, in rather dis­re­spect­ful terms.  While, like you, I am not too impressed with Jones, I would tone that down in future reports.  You never know who might read what you write, and there are more art­ful ways to describe a witness’s appear­ance than “dirty”.  I would sug­gest “unkempt”.  Also, I dis­agree with your assess­ment of the value of this case, and the atti­tudes of jurors in Upscale County, but if your client wishes to pay more to set­tle this case than does mine, I am not unhappy to hear it.

On Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 12, 2009, less than a tenth of a per­cent of U.S. lawyers were laid off. With their gift for self-important histri­on­ics lawyers nat­u­rally labeled this “Black Thurs­day;” non-lawyers would prob­a­bly label it “a good start.” Nobody seems to think the purges are over. Jor­dan Fur­long (Law21) thinks that “What we’re look­ing at here is the real pos­si­bil­ity that the law firm asso­ciate, in its cur­rent form, will not sur­vive this cri­sis,” and Bruce MacEwen (Adam Smith, Esq.) sug­gests a few ways for firms to cull their ranks more intelligently.

New York criminal-defense lawyer Scott Green­field (Sim­ple Jus­tice) tells the crim­i­nal defense bar What Black Thurs­day Will Mean Come Mon­day (hint: some of BigLaw’s inferior-or-surplus lawyers will be try­ing to make an hon­est liv­ing). Miami criminal-defense lawyer Brian Tan­nebaum has some free advice for for­mer BigLaw now criminal-defense lawyers.

[8] Under­stand that you have spent years doing noth­ing of any impor­tance.
What you are doing now, is impor­tant. Do not take cases that are over your head. It takes about 4 words for the crim­i­nal defense bar, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges to know that you are a fish out of water. So before you go into court and demand a hear­ing that every­one else waives and has waived for 30 years, talk to someone.

The culled lawyers aspir­ing to crim­i­nal lawyer­ness, many of whom will never have been in a cour­t­house for any­thing more than the kabuki of a civil trial, would do well also to read Scott Greenfield’s Lawyer to Geeks: YANAL.

My expe­ri­ence is that YANALs view the law as a series of hyper­tech­ni­cal­i­ties, any­one of which will trip up the cops and pros­e­cu­tion. They har­bor a bizarre belief that the nice words appear­ing reg­u­larly in court deci­sions actu­ally mean some­thing, rather than present black let­ter law which is then torn to shreds by the thou­sand excep­tion and the func­tional refusal to apply it in the trenches. How does one explain to a binary thinker that a judge waves his arm and the law mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­pears? “They can’t do that!” Oh yes. They can. They do. Every sin­gle day. Wel­come to the real world.

One thing the culled lawyers may now do is rep­re­sent col­lege ath­letes in Ohio because, as Mark at Sports­BizBlog tells us, an Ohio judge has struck down the NCAA’s ban on such rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

(Is it too much to hope that the BigLaw cull will lead to the demise of the Blue­book, which Mark Ran­dazza (The Legal Satyri­con) epi­gram­mat­i­cally describes as “the only book in exis­tence that actu­ally makes the world a shit­tier place”?)

Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809, was Abra­ham Lincoln’s birth­day, and today is President’s Day. Vir­ginia pros­e­cu­tor Tom McKenna (Seek­ing Jus­tice) in President’s Day Thoughts laments Abra­ham Lincoln’s role in win­ning the War of the North­ern Aggres­sion and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the Four­teenth Amend­ment, which makes the Bill of Rights enforce­able against state gov­ern­ments. The States, it seems, ought to be able to make laws restrict­ing human free­dom with­out inter­fer­ence from that nassstty Bill of Rightsssessss. (Orthog­o­nally: Jef­fer­son Davis was elected Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­acy on Feb­ru­ary 9th, 1861.)

One of the Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ments that the States have to honor because of the Four­teenth Amend­ment is the First. They don’t have to worry so much about free speech in Ger­many, where, Bir­git Clark (IPKat) reports, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment cracked down on repro­duc­tions of actual Nazi news­pa­pers that were printed not to pro­mote Nazi philoso­phies but for his­tor­i­cal research, nor in Britain, where, Ken at Pope­hat relates, a high-ranking diplo­mat has been charged with “incit­ing reli­gious hatred” for a loutish out­burst at the gym.

Also on Feb­ru­ary 12, 2009 a com­muter plane crashed in Buf­falo New York, killing all 49 aboard and one per­son on the ground (and it was the lay­off of 800-some pam­pered BigLaw asso­ciates that made the day “black”; lawyers are some kind of ass­hats!). Miami criminal-defense lawyer Brian Tan­nebaum (My Law License) writes in A Plane Crashes, A Law Stu­dent Dies:

The tim­ing of this plane crash makes some things obvi­ous. It was a late Thurs­day night flight from Newark to Buf­falo. What’s obvi­ous is that most peo­ple were going home. Home for the long week­end. Going home like this Florida law stu­dent. It was a short flight, mean­ing some prob­a­bly didn’t call their fam­ily to tell them they loved them, or call them about any­thing. A quick flight, skip and a jump, no big deal.

Now they’re all dead.

Fol­low­ing the crash, New York per­sonal injury lawyer Eric “Turk” Turke­witz mon­i­tored lawyers who were using the inter­net to solicit cases aris­ing from the crash, and wrote two posts about his obser­va­tions: Buf­falo Plane Crash WILL Test New York’s New Anti-Solicitation Rules (Updated x2) and New York Per­sonal Injury Law Blog: Buf­falo Plane Crash Ad Taken Down:

Attor­ney adver­tis­ing and ethics are deeply entwined. And so, when the adver­tis­ing is out­sourced, then the ethics get out­sourced with it.

Speak­ing of out­sourced legal ethics, one thing that I love is to mess with inter­net legal mar­keters. Know­ing this, some kind soul sub­mit­ted for my Blawg Review con­sid­er­a­tion this crassly self-aggrandizing post on a crass adver­tis­ing blog (I have edited away any pos­si­ble SEO value): Mich­gan Trock Acsi­dent Attur­ney is the Author­ity for Trock Acsi­dent Vic­tims | Mich­gan Auto Law Blog.  I enjoyed the account by Stingray at Atomic Nerds gives an amus­ing account of how he dealt with the tele­phone equiv­a­lent of the blawg mar­keter. Oh, and by the way Grant Grif­fiths wants to teach you to blog for profit for profit (that is not a typo); he has man­u­fac­tured a scarcity of 250 “mem­bers.” I wish he had set the num­ber con­sid­er­ably lower, like zero — I don’t believe the world needs another 250 Mich­gan Trock Acsident-type attur­neys who are “blog­ging for profit”; I’m afraid the sud­den increase in peo­ple treat­ing blogs as bla­tant mar­ket­ing tools may be too much for Scott Greenfield’s aging heart. They should, how­ever, be good for at least a lit­tle enter­tain­ment value.

Feb­ru­ary 12th, 1809 was Charles Darwin’s birth­day as well. Howard M. Fried­man (Reli­gion Clause) informs us that the 14th and 15th were “Evo­lu­tion Week­end” in houses of wor­ship. “Over a thou­sand con­gre­ga­tions from all 50 states and 15 for­eign coun­tries [were] slated to take part.” Secur­ing Inno­va­tion blog marks the anniver­sary with “some inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about patents and the Human Genome Project”. Brownsville, Texas lawyer Ed Sta­ple­ton (Aim Low and You’ll Never Be Dis­ap­pointed) writes, Happy Birth­day Mr. Dar­win, and David Giacalone (f/k/a) notes a link between Lin­coln and Dar­win in their influ­ence on lan­guage, while Win­ning Trial Advo­cacy Tech­niques Blog writes this week about visual dis­trac­tion and … apes in busi­ness suits:

Just once in my life I want to dress a chim­panzee in a busi­ness suit, bring him to court, and seat him next to me at coun­sel table for the entire trial. (If I can train him to hold a sign that says “Tell Us What Hap­pened Next,” he could even per­form a direct exam­i­na­tion or two.)

On Feb­ru­ary 13th, 1935, Bruno Haupt­mann was con­victed of mur­der­ing Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s baby boy. Would Haupt­mann have been bet­ter served by a board-certified criminal-defense lawyer, if such a thing existed then? Ft. Worth criminal-defense lawyer Shawn Mat­lock (the Mat­lock Blog) dis­cusses the ben­e­fits of becom­ing board cer­ti­fied in Texas.

Norm Pat­tis had a client this week who was unjustly accused and then acquit­ted, but Norm, and criminal-defense lawyers every­where, know how it feels to have clients unjustly con­victed. Doubt­slinger says, “kiss my ass, you twelve rocks in a box;” Gideon (A Pub­lic Defender) says that Some days are ago­niz­ing, and Ambimb (Pub­lic Defender Stuff) responds, “Come on San­cho Panza! We have clients to defend.”

One guy who got really badly screwed by the crim­i­nal “jus­tice” sys­tem was Ricardo Rachell, who spent six years in prison for a rape he didn’t com­mit because none of the three pros­e­cu­tors assigned to his case or his defense lawyer could be both­ered to ask for  a DNA test. Rage Judi­cata focuses his rage on the pros­e­cu­tors and the Hous­ton Police Depart­ment. Even less lucky than Rachell was Tim­o­thy Cole, who spent 14 years in prison, where he died of asthma, for a rape he didn’t com­mit. Wal­ter Reaves (Waco Crim­i­nal Law Blog) dis­cusses his thoughts on the case and the dan­gers of misidentification.

Blonde Jus­tice helps us pre­pare to tilt at our wind­mills with her series on how to pre­pare for trial; her Step Four dis­cusses the logis­tics of get­ting ready for trial. Mary­land criminal-defense lawyer Jon Katz (Under­dog), tak­ing a more philo­soph­i­cal tack, writes about Tri­als and the art of blood­less war, col­lect­ing some thoughts on the Art of War and trial:

I have found no book-length dis­cus­sion of Sun Tzu as his teach­ings apply to crim­i­nal defense prac­tice, but have found some of the below-addressed shorter dis­cus­sions related to crim­i­nal defense prac­tice. Today’s blog entry brings together some of my obser­va­tions about Sun Tzu and crim­i­nal defense, and links to oth­ers’ related discussions.

Also in the philo­sophic vein, Stephanie West Allen (ide­alawg) announces a mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion retreat for lawyers in Cal­i­for­nia in April.

Feb­ru­ary 13th this year was a Fri­day, a com­bi­na­tion dreaded by triskaideka­phobes, but in my stomp­ing grounds, the Har­ris County Crim­i­nal Cour­t­house, the 10th was unlucky for Judge Ellis of the 351st. He dis­cov­ered after the jury came back with a guilty ver­dict that 13 of 12 jurors had delib­er­ated.

Feb­ru­ary 14th is, of course, Valentine’s day. In obser­vance, Anne Reed (Delib­er­a­tions) col­lects juror-fall-in-love sto­ries in ugly cases, and con­cludes: “If jurors’ minds could wan­der from the evi­dence in these tri­als, we can safely con­clude that they wan­der in every trial. Jurors walk into the court­room with com­pli­cated thoughts, from com­pli­cated lives, and they don’t and can’t set all that aside just because you’re talk­ing.” These jurors might find some words of advice Dr. Fiona Travis’s (Lawyer Avenue) post, Marry a Lawyer? Pro­ceed with Cau­tion.

In other love-related news, Matthew I. Fraidin (Fam­ily Law Prof Blog) informs us that two women who bore chil­dren fathered by the same man (step-babymommas?) have an “inti­mate rela­tion­ship” for pur­poses of the New York State Fam­ily Court Act. And, speak­ing of uncon­ven­tional loves, Cog­ni­tive Daily (again, not a blawg, but you need to be read­ing Cog­ni­tive Daily if your job has any­thing to do with con­vinc­ing strangers to do things) writes about Selec­tion bias and homo­sex­u­al­ity:

A cou­ple hours ago I posted a quick poll, in what might be con­strued as an unbi­ased fash­ion. I sim­ply asked respon­dents for their sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, offer­ing a wide array of choices rang­ing from “straight” to “mostly gay” to “gay” to “other.”

In fact, my poll was biased — not because the ques­tion itself was slanted, but because of the way respon­dents were recruited: I titled the post “Are you homo­sex­ual?” Poten­tial respon­dents who are homo­sex­ual or who don’t have tra­di­tional sex­ual pref­er­ences are more likely to be inter­ested in the ques­tion, and there­fore more likely to respond.

The les­son for trial lawyers is that the way we ask our ques­tions affects not only the answers we get, but also whether we get answers at all.

I love to read. When I was a child I loved to read. So Wal­ter Olson’s (Over­lawyered) reports on the CPSIA’s effect on pre-1985 children’s books were heart­break­ing to me.

Merg­ing intel­lec­tual prop­erty law and love — One Love — for Valentine’s Day, Dal­las IP lawyer Tam­era Ben­nett (Cur­rent Trends in Copy­right, Trade­mark, and Enter­tain­ment Law) tells us that

Bob Marley’s estate inked a mer­chan­dis­ing agree­ment with pri­vate equity group Hilco Con­sumer Cap­i­tal for the rights to license not only the reg­gae singer’s name & like­ness, but also other branded prod­ucts under the Tuff Gong, One Love, Three Lit­tle Birds, Catch A Fire and Relics of Antiq­uity names.

Marc Ran­dazza (Legal Satyri­con) fol­lows up on his Valentine’s Day 2008 post about the film “2 Girls, 1 Cup” by revis­it­ing that scat film and ask­ing the ques­tion, Should Any­thing Be Held Legally Obscene? Apro­pos of copropha­gia, William Mitchell Col­lege of Law stu­dent Emily Bab­cock (Food Law Prof Blog) warns us of Mer­cury in High Fruc­tose Corn Syrup.

On Feb­ru­ary 15th, 1820, Susan B. Anthony was born. On the same date in 1879, Pres­i­dent Hayes signed a bill allow­ing women to argue cases before the Supreme Court. In 2009 Ms. JD has a weekly roundup of arti­cles on the theme of women in law, and Ann Bar­tow (Fem­i­nist Law Pro­fes­sors) gives us an account of two aspir­ing lawyers’ treat­ment online that reminds us that we’re a long way from treat­ing women as fairly as they deserve. As Nebraska criminal-defense lawyer David Tar­rell (In The Moment) reminds us in The Pack­ing Sta­ple, how we treat peo­ple can rever­ber­ate in ways hard to imagine.

Feb­ru­ary 15th is also Canada’s Flag Day. Cana­dian Law Blog Law is Cool reminds us with a car­toon that It’s Not Easy being a Felon on Valentine’s Day.

Galileo Galilei was born on Feb­ru­ary 15, 1564. He gave us a whole new way of look­ing at the uni­verse. Orlando / Tampa tax lawyer Peter Pap­pas (the Tax Lawyer’s Blog) gives us a whole new way of look­ing at one lit­tle part of that uni­verse by telling us that we have rights as tax­pay­ers (who knew?) and what to do when the IRS screws up.

Finally, Galileo gave us a bet­ter under­stand­ing of outer space; The Under­blawg dreams of Alpine, Texas, and space of a dif­fer­ent sort:

I mean, I’ll tell you (and this is not the sort of thing that I’d nor­mally tell because it’s crazy and stu­pid and, though I’m both, I like to hide it), but I’ve got this dream and in this dream, there’s space. A lot of it. Real space, and not one human thing around me that’s not mine. I can’t see the neigh­bors and they can’t see me.

That’s my Blawg Review, and I’m stick­ing to it.

Blawg Review has infor­ma­tion about next week’s host, and instruc­tions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcom­ing issues.

Tags: Blawg Review

This entry was posted by Mark Bennett on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 5:33 pm and is filed under blawgs, scavenging, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.