Today, the Wall Street Journal law blog has a big story:
Forfeiture and the Sixth Amendment: From Drug to White-Collar Cases?
Posted by Dan Slater
Anything sound at all familiar about this post?
Maybe? A little? Does this ring a bell?
When White Powder Law Meets White Collar
Now I can understand the pressure on Dan Slater to produce good quality work for his gig at the WSJ. I know how hard it is, day after day, to find something interesting to write about. I appreciate the drudgery when your paycheck is on the line, when thousands of readers are counting on you to produce, when the kids need to get fed again today.
But Dan, as much as I realize that you’re working with a gun to your head, you’ve got to stop coming over here to glom my pieces. Sure, link to me and riff off my stuff all you want. I get it. I’m just some blawging knucklehead (a name I’ve come to admire) and you work for the Wall Street Journal. It’s not like Rupert takes hostages, right?
Even so, it’s just not nice. Hey, send me an email saying, “Yo, Scott, mind if I take one of yours from the weekend? I’m stuck and Murdoch’s all over me like flies on the New York Post.” I cool with that. I let people borrow pretty liberally. I’ve got a heart.
Or buy me a beer some time. And Turk too, because we drink together (we’re like a team). That way, when we pass out in a stupor after the first beer, there’s someone we can fall on and not hurt ourselves.
Look Dan, you’re welcome here whenever you want. While we have yet to bond, I consider us brothers in arms, so to speak, so I’m here for you. Just give me the heads up next time. And if you want, I’ll even write a couple of extra posts just for you and you can have them whole, lock, stock and barrel. No need to thank me. That’s the kind of blawger I am.
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Hmmmm. Beer. When do we collect?
I’m working it.
You’re not the only one:
http://federalism.typepad.com/crime_federalism/2008/05/presumption-of.html
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2008/05/legal-challenge.html
They’re different. Nobody else drew the analogy between the development of forfeiture law when it only applied to nasty drugs (and nobody cared) and it’s current application to white collar crime (where suddenly everyone is outraged). And even in the title of the post!
I let you in on it when I glommed one of your ideas, remember? You were ok with it. A beer is a fair trade for it. Someday.
SHG wrote: “Nobody else drew the analogy between the development of forfeiture law when it only applied to nasty drugs (and nobody cared) and it’s current application to white collar crime (where suddenly everyone is outraged).”
Dude, the Law.com article itself made that very point. I could just as easily say that you stole your post idea from the article. Here is what the Law.com article said:
Alexandria, Va., attorney David B. Smith, who co-chairs the forfeiture abuse committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said federal judges make bad law in drug cases because they have no sympathy for the defendant.
“Now they are stuck with that law when the government says you have to apply that same law in white-collar cases,” Smith said. “It’s too bad you’ve already said defendants have no rights.”
Nuts. I didn’t read that far (it got boring). Never mind.
Dude?
Does that mean no beer?
I still think he stole the title, but it’s looking more like a Colt .45 in the parking lot now. Thanks to Cernovich, the snitch.
“Dude?”
When I post comments, I write like I talk.
That’s how I talk, man. 😉
I do agree with the theme, though.
Sometime a while ago I posted about the schadenfreude I experience when “good” people are charged with crimes and are just shocked that they have no rights.
Do I have to make a new rule, that you can’t use “dude” and “schadenfreude” in the same comment?
I’d ignore the rule. 😉
But while I can use schadenfreude, I sure as Hell can’t spell it. I had to type several permutations of into Google before finally getting it right.
Dudes:
What is wrong with theft of intellectual property?
Schad Den Freud
You took the words right out of my mouth.