Mark Bennett, the Texas Tornado, is a broad-minded fellow, always searching for new and different criminal law blawgs in his homeland of Texas.  In his travels, he stumbled upon a blawg called Dallas Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer, belonging to a fellow named David Finn.

(Note that this blawg is not to be confused with the excellent Blawg of Robert Guest, formerly I Was The State and now Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer, because the “experts” tell him that he will be more easily searchable with a generic name.)

Bennett stumbled on Finn’s blawg because he searched for an article about a client of his.  It wasn’t a good article for his client, but a DOJ press release that smeared his client up front to ease the way to conviction by tainting the public as early as possible.  And where did he find this government propaganda?  Why, on the blawg of Mr. Finn.  The Texas Tornado was not amused:

This blog is the intersection of the Super Lawyer discussion, the Former Prosecutor discussion, the Half-an-Hour a Week discussion, and the Ghostblawging discussion, with a little bit of “look-at-me-I’m-a-government-stooge” added in for good measure.

David is a purported “Super Lawyer,” a former prosecutor who is spending half an hour a week — if that — producing his blog thanks to the unwitting help of his ghostblawgers at DOJ, the Las Vegas Sun, and other sources.

But “government stooge”? Them’s fightin’ words in Texas; might be in Dallas too. So I’d better back ’em up.

For the uninitiated, Dallas is consider part of the United States in Texas, kinda like a Vatican in the midst of Italy.  Fightin’ words in Dallas include “this latte is luke warm” and “how quaint that you buy your suits off the rack.” 

But the Finn blawg is no blawg at all, as Bennett found.  This was another marketing scam, where articles or press releases were copied wholesale and posted to the blawg in order to create the pretense of content.  There was no original content; no original thought.  It was dead air filled with the flotsam and jetsam that can be quickly found and posted.

This is bad enough.  It goes back to my abiding concern that the blawgosphere will become a wasteland of marketing and commercialism, and collapse under the weight of scam blawgs that drive readers away.  Would anyone tune in to a radio station that broadcasts 100 commercials to every song?  It’s just not worth it.

But Finn took his scam one step farther, which is what really got Bennett’s goat.  He not only created a scam marketing blawg, but he took his content from the easiest sources, including our government.  By promoting Justice Department press releases as newsworthy, he added his voice to the advance damnation of defendants, something that any legitimate criminal defense lawyer finds abhorrent.  Hence, “government stooge.”

Of course, Finn should be ashamed, unless he’s angling for another turn in the U.S. Attorney’s office.  We don’t happily smear the accused and aid in the destruction of reputation of those “presumed innocent.”  It’s wrong when the government does it.  It’s worse when a criminal defense lawyer does it.  Would you want to retain an attorney who was a laboring oar in the government’s smearing of defendants? 

Just as many of us in the practical blawgosphere like to bring new blawgs to the attention of others, to give them a leg up in the blawgosphere so people will know they exist, it’s a similar mitzvah to out a scam blawg.  As they say in Texas, this one needed killin’.  This blawg is a total fraud, and it should die.