In New York, my typical wake up comes at about 5:00 am.  Apparently, the gene that might have made my forebearers good farmers was so well-developed that it has stayed with me well past its usefulness.  I enjoy having a couple of hours of quiet before the rest of the world turns on the coffee pot, and find it a very productive time.  But that’s me.

The rest of the world, by and large, disagrees.  I’m used to that.  As I awoke in Los Angeles this morning at my usual hour, it was slightly earlier in California time.  Los Angeles is not like New York.  New York is the City that Never Sleeps.  Los Angeles is the City that Sleeps Late.  Try to get a cup of coffee in LA at 3 am.  Ha!  Silly New Yorker.

But this isn’t just a little coffee issue when you travel around the country for work.  I tried a few cases in Anchorage, Alaska a while back, and learned just how bizarre this can turn out to be.  Imagine, waking up at 2 am local time and sitting in the Capt. Cook Hotel waiting for room service to open for the day.  Still four hours off. 

Imagine finishing up cross-examination at 5:00 local time, and being ready to go to sleep for the night.  Everyone else wants to go out for dinner and drinks, and all you can think about is climbing into the sack.  After all, it’s 10:00 pm according to your head.  You ate breakfast and lunch before the courtroom ever opened, and dinner was the burger you had during the lunch break. 

There’s a reason that a typical trial day ends at 5 pm.  That’s about as far as a mind can get while still retaining the level of acuity needed to make an FBI agent cry during cross.  When their 5 is your 10, the mind is only good enough for the final of a reality show or maybe a melodrama best suited for teenagers.  Even a decent mind has its limits.

I awoke this morning to a Los Angeles that was still fast asleep.  There was no coffee to be had.  There was no one to beg for coffee.  At least I could get the people at the Capt. Cook Hotel to bring me coffee at 2:00 am.  Next time I come to LA, I’m going to find a Motel 6 with an all night coffee pot.

Via Doug Berman, the 6th Circuit gave its Christmas present with its December 24th en banc decision on the constitutionality of acquitted conduct sentencing in United States v. White,  Here’s a hint as to the 7-6 outcome; don’t invite the majority to your holiday party unless you are desperate for a really bad time.

For those who might not yet be aware of what acquitted conduct sentencing is, consider this:  Defendant is charged with 3 counts in a federal indictment and goes to trial.  On two counts, the defendant is found not guilty.  Guilty on one count.  The defendant is thereafter sentenced based upon all three counts in the indictment.  Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

It may be wrong, but it’s not exactly crazy.  At least not if one understands the odd mechanics of legal precedent and reasoning, particularly as employed in the majority decision.  Put together these concepts, which relate well under many circumstances.

1.  The judge may consider, at the time of imposing sentence, all conduct relevant to the conduct for which the defendant has been convicted.

Watts regarded acquitted conduct as providing the sentencing court with “[h]ighly relevant—if not essential . . . information.” 519 U.S. at 151–52.

2.  The standard of proof at sentencing as to the occurrence of conduct under consideration is preponderance of the evidence, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt as it would be at trial.

Relying on the different standards of proof that govern at trial versus sentencing, the Court concluded “that a jury’s verdict of acquittal does not prevent the sentencing court from considering conduct underlying the acquitted charge, so long as that conduct has been proved by a preponderance of the evidence.”

3.  Along came Booker, holding that the federal sentencing guidelines were advisory, not mandatory, and Booker didn’t expressly overrule Watts.

Mendez accords with the view expressed by each of our sister circuits that Booker did not alter the Watts position on acquitted conduct: “Watts remains good law.”

4.  While Watts rejected a 5th Amendment double jeopardy challenge to use of acquitted conduct sentencing, White is a 6th Amendment, right to jury case, challenging whether a judge can find facts (that the acquitted conduct occurred) when the jury did not.

As Booker itself recognized, Watts’s rejection of a double-jeopardy challenge to the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing did not close the door on subsequent Sixth Amendment challenges to sentences based on judge-found facts. Booker, 543 U.S. at 240–41 & n.4. Thus, although a court may properly look to facts underlying acquitted conduct in sentencing, the Sixth Amendment remains a backstop.

5.  But the right to a jury determination of fact only applies if it produces an increase in the sentence to be determined based on mandatory sentencing guidelines.

Had the district court in this case relied on acquitted conduct in determining the range under a mandatory guidelines regime, that sentence would have violated the Sixth Amendment as interpreted in Booker. For the same reason that Booker precluded district courts from finding sentencing facts that ratcheted up mandatory Guidelines ranges, it would have prevented district courts from doing the same thing with respect to findings related to acquitted conduct.

6.  If the sentencing guidelines are merely advisory, then the lower, preponderance standard prevails and finding of relevant conduct by a judge alone is sufficient.

For the same reason that Booker precluded district courts from finding sentencing facts that ratcheted up mandatory Guidelines ranges, it would have prevented district courts from doing the same thing with respect to findings related to acquitted conduct.

But these observations do not show that the Sixth Amendment prevents a district court from relying on acquitted conduct in applying an advisory guidelines system.

7.  This is so because Post-Booker, the relevant limit for a 6th Amendment determination is the statutory maximum sentence, not the advisory guidelines sentence.  So if the statute carries a max of 20 years, and the sentence doesn’t exceed 20 years, no harm, no foul.

In the post-Booker world, the relevant statutory ceiling is no longer the Guidelines range but the maximum penalty authorized by the United States Code. See United States v. Sexton, 512 F.3d 326, 330 (6th Cir.) (“Since defendants were sentenced under an advisory Guidelines scheme, the maximum statutory penalty that the district court could impose was determined by the statute of conviction, rather than by a Guidelines range calculated using only jury findings.”).

It’s hard to fault the reasoning, given how legal reasoning works.  Sure, it’s disingenuous, since acquitted conduct sentencing was the norm under the sentencing guidelines when they were mandatory, and are now permissible because of Booker making them merely advisory.  But you can’t blame sophists for doing a great job of it.

The majority takes comfort in the argument that since the statute provides for a 20 year sentence, and the defendant’s sentence, though more than double what it would have been without the acquitted conduct, falls just shy of that 20 years, he has no basis to complain.  The circularity of this comfort is frightening, given that these are people who are asked to make decisions about other people’s lives.  That Congress stuck an arbitrary 20 years on the back end of a statute offers no justification for using it whenever possible.  Worse still, they know that and don’t care.

The line of reasoning is complete, in a world where precedent fills in logical gaps and decision-makers are more concerned with producing a consistent and unbroken line of caselaw than reaching a result that is almost universally considered fundamentally wrong.

The dissent offers a simpler argument: Using acquitted conduct to sentence a defendant is wrong, and the defendant received a sentence of more than twice what he would have but for use of acquitted conduct.  When a jury rejects a charge, it must have meaning or the right to a jury trial itself has no meaning.  No amount of sophistry changes the clear, basic sense of wrong that accompanies a sentence based upon the very conduct that a jury just rejected.  This society is not prepared to accept such an outcome, no matter how symmetrical the legal reasoning supporting it.

The significance of a not guilty verdict is not merely in hearing the kind words, but in not going to prison for the underlying conduct anyway.  The dissent understood that.  As its asks, how does this promote respect for the law?  The answer is obvious,  It’s not just not the primary concern of the majority.

This case seems to be perfect for determination by the Supreme Court, with its 7-6 en banc split.  But the better question is whether we want the reasoning of the majority enshrined in Washington.  Remember, the Supremes aren’t always in perfect tune with fundamental fairness as understood by lesser people.

Some Christmas present.

No matter how much one might have hoped that attending Marquette Law School might prepare one for a glorious career as a lawyer, prepare to have your hopes dashed.  After noting that there is an “issue” with the pedagogical sensibilities of a certain faculty member, things went from bad to worse.

In a subsequent comment on the offending post at the Marquette Faculty Blog, we learn that the expectations of lawyers (note, not law students, not lawprofs, but lawyers) that law school would prepare a student for the practice of law was, well, foolish:

However, I strongly agree with Chris King’s sense of the proper relationship between legal education and the practice of law. We don’t want law school to be lawyer-training school. When we cave in to demands of that sort from the ABA and assorted study commissions, we actually invite alienation among law students and lawyers. Legal education should appreciate the depth of the legal discourse and explore its rich complexities. It should operate on a graduate-school level and graduate people truly learned in the law.

I would like to challenge this directly, but such vagaries as “the depth of legal discourse” and “its rich complexities” mean so little as to be beyond reproach.  To a fault.  So while I have no clue exactly what it is that this professor believes should be taught, one thing is clear, it isn’t how to practice law.

Imagine, the dirtiness of a law school teaching law students how to practice law.  Disgusting.  Revolting.  How beneath the dignity of such a distinguished scholar.  Instead, they should be taught . . . what? 

The comment to which the quoted comment so strenuously agrees proposes that law school not be bothered training lawyers either.

I think its important to remember, like Professor Papke notes, that law school is an academic experience, if we want law school to be more of an apprenticeship then that is an entirely different discussion than perceived shortcomings of law school.

So where exactly do budding lawyers go to learn how to be full-fledged lawyers?  Certainly not Marquette Law School.  They don’t want any dirty, grubby lawyers coming out of there.  Apparently, they are much happier producing graduates incapable of practicing law, but very popular at cocktail parties discussing the depth of it and its complexities.

And yet they still crank out law students who are expected to take the bar and hold in their scholarly little hands real people’s lives. 

Of course, this could merely be the rambling of one faculty member, with the obsequious support of some of his more junior colleagues awaiting tenure and one law student who serves as his expert on public defenders due to a 6 month internship.  But then, where are the lawprofs who actually have a clue what they are doing teaching law school?  If I’m wrong, it would certainly be nice to have someone straighten me out.

PS:  For the Texas view, see Mark Bennett’s post :

In fact, I propose a new motto for Marquette: If you want to practice law, go somewhere else.

Catchy, no?

Taking an early morning flight to LAX, so talk amongst yourselves.  Joel and Gid will be in charge of comments.  No making fun of Tannebaum without me.  Bennett will handle all marketing duties until my return to the blawgosphere.

Special to Windy:  I’m okay.  No need to worry.

Blawging requires one to be a watcher as well as a writer.  Our existence in the blawgosphere does not continue for long if we are isolated from others, and that results in the growth of communities of interest and relationships with others in the blawgosphere.  Within these communities emerge some special individuals who keep them vibrant and alive. 

From my observations, there are really three blawgospheres.  They overlap from time to time, but can be described as distinct from one another and have characteristics that distinguish them from the other two.  Within these blawgospheres, there have emerged wise men and women.  They are respected, even by those who disagree with them.  They didn’t pronounce themselves to be wise men and women,  They never asked for the job.  But by virtue of their intelligence, thoughtfulness, inquisitiveness and integrity, wise men and women they became.

First, allow me to describe the three blawgospheres I know.  First is the academic blawgosphere, which is distinguished by its curiosity and self-deprecation.  Law professors have no cause to drum up clients, and because of this offer pure thought and argument, untainted by the mundane pressures that influence others.

The second is the marketing blawgosphere, consisting of those who have found a tool to convey a message and for whom the tool is omnipresent in everything the blawgosphere offers.  The marketing blawgosphere consists of those whose purpose in joining is to present themselves and their services to the broader world, to offer services needed by those who wish to do so, and to engage in a synergistic existence with everyone else who can help them to achieve their goals. 

While I have been critical of this part of the blawgosphere for its effort to extend its reach into the third blawgosphere, and its refusal to accept the premise that just because the marketing blawgosphere believes itself to be the core, I recognize that it is real, that it serves interests that it believes to be legitimate and that it means to be a helpful and productive part of the blawgosphere, and is integral for many members of the blawgosphere who believe in its purpose.

The final blawgosphere is the practical blawgosphere, consisting of practicing lawyers who write of their legal experiences in the trenches, philosophies, victories and defeats.  They offer a vision of life as a lawyer to be shared with anyone interested.

The title of this post is three wise men, but that’s just a Christmas vanity.  There are many wise men and women that I’ve encountered in the blawgosphere.  Here are some of their names.

Mark Bennett, Dan Hull, David Giacalone, Kevin O’Keefe, Susan Cartier Leibel, Gideon. Mark Draughn, Joel Rosenberg, Carolyn Elefant, Eric Turkewitz, Eugene Volokh, Orin Kerr, Dave Hoffman, Frank Pasquale, Dan Markel, Dan Solove, Ken, Ken Lammers,  Anne Reed, Howard Bashman, Walter Olson, Marc John Randazza, Jim Chen, Charon, Radley Balko, Geeklawyer, Jamie Spencer, Skelly, Jon Katz, Jonathon Turley, Lyle Denniston, Douglas Berman, Scott Henson, David Lat, Niki Black and the departed Norm Pattis.

I’m sure I’ve left some off, because I am not as wise or thorough as those I admire.  Some in this august group I call friends.  Some don’t even know I exist.  Some have linked to me regularly, while other have not and never will.  Some have said nice things about me, and others have expressed nothing but disdain. 

My appreciation of wise men and women bears no connection to what’s in it for me, and I have no expectation of gain for putting someone onto this list.  It is the list of people whom I believe are wise based on my observations.  It is not a list of people with whom I necessarily agree or wish to curry favor.  They certainly do not need someone like me to put them on a list, as my list is of no consequence to what they bring to the blawgosphere.

The blawgospheres have expanded and contracted over the past year.  Some changes present interesting challenges to its ongoing existence and vitality.  Much as there are wise men and women, there are many fools.  The fools desire prominence for their own ends, and present one of the greatest challenges to the blawgosphere, as they want the wise men and women to be fools as well, so that no one will notice how foolish the fools are.  The wise men and women will simply continue to do what they do for as long as it seems worthwhile.

It’s an honor to be a part of the blawgospheres, and the blawgospheres exist because of the wise men and women who have made it a place worthy of being.  Thank you for your efforts, which have allowed me to contribute my small piece.

Every day that an innocent man spends in prison is a hard one, but today must be particularly hard for James S. Anderson.  It’s not that it’s a new experience, as this is his 5th Christmas in prison.  It’s that he has now been found to be an innocent man.  It’s a done deal.  He didn’t do it.  But he is still in his prison cell.  According to the AP :

A state appeals court erased the 31-year-old’s conviction for armed robbery this month, saying new evidence uncovered by a law school student corroborates what Anderson has always said: He was another state when a group of men hit a Tacoma grocery store in 2004.

Prosecutors joined Anderson’s lawyers in asking for his immediate release, but severe winter storms closed the court and helped delay the necessary paperwork.

There is no reality without a piece of paper being given by one cog in the wheel to another.  I would imagine that there’s a person at Walla Walla Prison who knows all about Anderson’s being innocent, conviction vacated, about to walk out the front door a free man, and is just waiting for the paperwork.  Just waiting.  Anderson is just waiting too.

Most of the time, the defendant who is about to walk out of prison a free man is far too happy about his sudden collision with justice to complain.  Having spent years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, a few more days won’t kill him.  Well, hopefully it won’t kill him.  The guards are unusually generous to such a prisoner, knowing that his release is imminent.  It matters that he’s leaving because of innocence.  He’s no longer one of them, as he was the day before.

Few people think much about the mechanics of a man walking out of prison after his conviction has been vacated.  It’s an experience that all of us want, but few of us get.  Having suffered through it, I can tell you that it’s a mass of confusion.  After the sudden elation of the reversal of a conviction, everyone looks around with a quizzical stare.  Now what?  A piece of paper from the court seems to be an incredibly important piece of the puzzle, but in a bureaucracy like the criminal justice system, paper is god.  Each person along the way has his own piece of paper that must be perfect of nothing moves.

One would think technology would alleviate some of the waste, but raised seals and original signatures still matter.  No one, but no one, wants to be the person who does something wrong, so each insists that every “i” is dotted.  If only they were so concerned about perfection when putting people into prison.

That there is a storm in Washington that’s closed the courthouse, kept the judge or clerk from the shifting of papers from one hand to another, on the day before Christmas can’t be helped.  Storms happen.That paperwork is necessary before a man is released from prison, even an innocent man, can’t be helped.  Paperwork happens.  But that a piece of paper is all that stands between an innocent man and his waking up at home on Christmas morning still stings.

Merry Christmas, James S. Anderson.  And Merry Christmas to the prison guards who may show you some greater kindness today because you are an innocent man in prison, and everyone at Walla Walla knows it.  Please protect Anderson until the piece of paper arrives.

As much as I could easily segue into the irony of my former governor’s comment that “sunshine is the best disinfectant,” I will restrain myself in an effort to bring posting for the day to a close on a more positive note than dead puppies.  Instead, I will be guided by the commentary of Connecticut criminal defense luminary Norm Pattis.  

Norm’s holiday commentary appears in the very same version of he Law Tribune that contains this brilliant interview of none other than my dear blawging neighbor, Gideon, who details his blawging inspirations:

Gideon also reads other legal blogs. His favorites include Scotusblog, Second Circuit Blog, Fourth Amendment Blog and Capital Defense Weekly. Gideon often goes to them after reading an important court decision. “I’d turn to one of the criminal law blogs to see their take on how it impacts our practice. And usually these posts are up within a day or so of the opinion being issued, if not hours,” Gideon said.

But enough about Gideon’s excellent taste and discretion, and back to Norm.

The Christmas season is often a time of cheap and easy sentimentality. We take a hiatus from our private imperatives and pretend, if only for a moment, that good will govern our affairs. We greet strangers with a kiss and think it not strange.

Economists keep telling us things will get worse before they get better. Some folks will lose jobs, others homes; we have to recover from something like a national drunk, now paying an overdue tab for pleasures long since passed.

But, truth be told, it isn’t really all that bad. My wife and I sat the other night working over our holiday gift list, reflecting on all the good things that folks have done for us in the past year. We want to express gratitude and thanks. So we check off items on a list scaled back in part by fear of hard times to come.

I know.  Almost made me cry too, it’s so filled with warmth and love.  How Norm ever picked criminal defense lawyer over inspirational speaker I’ll never know.  It’s our loss.

While I’m left with no choice but to toil in Norm’s warm and fuzzy shadow, I still offer my best wishes to all of you.  As Norm put it so very well, “it isn’t really all that bad.”  If I may add, we’re doing just fine.  If the sun isn’t shining today, it will be another day.  That’s how it works.  

Happy Holidays.  And I sincerely mean that.

Not being a big fan of pets regardless of species, I can’t lay claim to any particular soft spot when it comes to puppies, kittens or other critters.  On the other hand, it strikes me as inconceivable that any person with a healthy mind would harm animals except when absolutely necessary.  But what do I know?

Balko, pushed by yet another instance of puppycide, has put together a compendium of doggy murders :

Three weeks ago, police in Waldorf, Maryland shot a family dog in front of two small children while attempting to serve papers on a man who no longer lived at the address.  They claim the dog charged them.  Last month, police in Indianapolis put nine bullets in a German Shepherd.  They ignored warning signs about the dog posted on the property before walking in to serve a warrant on a man who hadn’t lived at the address in years.  Just last week week, police in Gwinnett County, Georgia shot and killed a Dalmatian after entering the wrong garage to serve a warrant in a gang-related case.

Milwaukee resident Virginia Villo is suing that city for the 2004 police shooting of her lab-springer spaniel mix, Bubba.  As part of her lawsuit, she requested police reports of every dog killed by Milwaukee police over a nine-year period.  The request turned up 434 dead puppy reports, or about one every seven-and-a-half days.

See more puppycide stories from recent months here, here, and here.  Or browse stories from the last couple of years here.

Many have asked why the killing of a dog strikes us differently than the killing of a human being.  It may be that we can more readily attribute malevolence toward people, whereas dogs are “man’s best friend.”  Absent some hard reason to believe that they are about to do actual harm, they possess no malice and cannot be blameworthy.  In other words, they are just being dogs.

The fact that so many police officers, faced with nothing more than a pet behaving like a a very ordinary pet, engage in an immediate reaction of shooting the dog.  Take no chances; take no prisoners.  See a dog, kill it.  Even if the officer has come onto the property of a law-abiding citizen, without cause or belief that any wrong-doing has occurred, the immediate reaction to a dog is murder.

Are police trained to do this?  Is the philosophical underpinning that a police officer’s safety is so special, so at risk, so worthy, that the murder of a pet is so utterly inconsequential in comparison?  Is this a reflection of a pervasive mental health defect that has long gone unrecognized?

It’s fair to wonder why this troubles me, given my lack of sensitivity toward pets in general.  The reason is that this belies an attitude of police officers that dismisses the importance of the life and safety of living things aside from themselves.  It’s not that they won’t save your life (and get a medal) under certain circumstances.  Indeed, when they find themselves in a “hero” situation, nothing brings them greater honor than to do the heroic thing.  Yet when they see a dog running toward them, they pull their weapon without a moment’s hesitation and shoot Fido in the head.  How do you reconcile these actions?

Radley suggests that the solution lies in better training:

Police departments should be training officers how to deal with dogs in ways other than filling them full of bullets.  Cops should be taught, for example, how to tell a charging dog from a bounding one; an angry dog from a barking but playful one; and that a curious or territorial bark is much less threatening than a snarl.  Mailmen, firemen, paramedics, and the rest of us non-badge-wearing citizens manage to visit private homes and deal with the dogs that may reside in them without resorting gunfire.  It’s odd that not insignificant number of police officers can’t.

I don’t think that lack of training is the problem.  Police officers don’t generally shoot to kill all dogs they encounter while off-duty.  They can tell a threatening dog from a playful one.  But put on the uniform and something snaps in their heads, allowing them to become disinhibited and resort to murder as the initial course of action.

So many of the issues discussed here call into question the psychological profile of the men and women to whom we give guns and shields, together with the power to use them.  While arguments can, and usually are, made to justify the shooting of person after person, it becomes far harder to explain how police suffer the constant need to kill pets.  Maybe this is the wedge to raise the issue of some cultural-psycho issue that might allow us to address the broader array of issues in the “police versus everyone else” mentality.

No mentally healthy person’s first reaction to a pet is to kill it.  It’s just sick.

Addendum:  Rick Horowitz has picked up the ball on this as well, arguing that today puppies, tomorrow your mother-in-law, in his post  They Shoot Puppies, Don’t They?  Rick tends more toward the governmental conspiracy view, arguing:

Although “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has been much touted since Abraham Lincoln, the truth is that our government is increasingly oligarchic and in opposition to the rest of us.  “Our” government pushes us into war without considering what’s best for the people.  “Our” government deregulates businesses which take advantage of us via the “free market.”  Thereafter, we discover that the market was free for them; extremely costly to the rest of us thanks to the oligarchy which actually reigns as an extension of corporate America.  (It will be interesting to see if this changes following the inauguration of our new Messiah.)

Accompanying the increasing separation between us and “our” government, there has been an increasing militarization of local police agencies.  And officers who refuse to go along get a beat-down themselves.

Who knows, maybe the police are the tool of the oligarchy.  It’s not like they tell me what they have up their sleeve.

Just as anyone with a computer can access a bunch of lawyers chatting amongst themselves, showing that we are not (as conspiratorial theorists suppose) a cabal with plans for world hegemony, so too can we see into the world of police officers.  And it’s a lot of fun!

Via J-dog on twitter came this post at Officer.com, “where law enforcement officers let their hair down and beat the living crap out of one another,” by a retired cop, Jim Donahue, who now serves as a consultant to police departments on the tactical use of police vehicles.  But this post had nothing to do with his area of expertise.  Rather, he was P.O.’d.

(Author’s Note: I originally wrote this article while I was still pretty steamed-up over the incident. I named names and pointed fingers and specific agencies and people. My always gracious editor suggested that I cool down and reexamine the writing. In the interest of peace and harmony, I’ve removed the specific names while attempting to retain its original fire.)

And what got him so steamed?

As I arrive at the front of the cars, there are two civilians who, like me, have emerged from their cars and are visiting with each other while they wait. There is a grunt cop standing in the immediate area, near his vehicle.

I politely inquire, “Is there an estimate on how much longer the crew will be?”

The cop looks straight at me, but as though he doesn’t see me, turns around, and walks a short distance away towards his unit. To say that I we perplexed at this behavior is fair.

When the cop takes up a new position, I make the same inquiry again. He proceeds to look away as though he doesn’t hear me.

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?

I was pissed at his behavior. The agency is known as being arrogant, often displaying a smell me attitude with the citizens and other cops, alike, but, this was simply rude and blatant beyond anything I could have anticipated.

Clearly, Donahue is a person of limited anticipation.  The “grunt cop” could have pistol whipped him, arrested him, charged him with attempted murder of a police officer.  There was plenty he could have done to be even “ruder”. 

But as pointed out by one of the commenters, Donahue’s concern may not have been limited to the cop’s simple lack of common courtesy to a civilian.  Donahue describes himself thusly:

I am wearing my only sweatshirt, which has a breast emblem from my previous department in Michigan. I just got my “high & tight” haircut tuned up yesterday. It would not be a great leap of faith to think that I may be a retired cop, a current cop, or minimally, related to law enforcement based upon my appearance and demeanor.

The commenter, in turn, notes:

In reading the article, it appears to me that the writer was more insulted that he was not recognized as a former officer. How many former officers have we known throughout the years that forgets that they are no longer an officer, thus perhaps are not privied to certain information. Seems to me every former officer I’ve ever come in contact with thinks information about whatever should be given to them because of who they were. Yet, thats just it…who they were.

I wonder if that smack mussed Donahue’s “high & tight” hairdo?  And other commenters as well were less than impressed by this critique of one of their own by some former cop.  The lesson, of course, is that a former cop is a former cop, and no longer a member of the fraternity, no matter how much they believe that the mini-badge in their wallet should count for something.

While there aren’t usually many lessons to be learned from these law enforcement websites that we haven’t already learned in spades from the representation of our clients and cross-examination of police officers, it’s always fun to have our best and worst fears confirmed.  There is no situation where a police officer can’t invent some justification to protect a fellow officer, and the bottom line is that, while believing that they are truly the last bastion of order for the civilized world, they really do hate the rest of us, and the rest of us apparently includes former cops as well.

I really hope Santa brings me that Minneapolis Police Department t-shirt for Christmas. 

H/T Kathleen for this very attractive pic of Jim Donahue.  I think the glasses make him look a bit like John Lennon.

According to Switched, the editors of Websters New World Dictionary have announced that “overshared” is the word of the year.

Mike Agnes, the dictionary’s Editor in Chief defines ‘overshare’ thusly:

Typically a verb, but also used as a noun, it is the name given to ‘too much information,’ whether willingly offered or inadvertently revealed. It is the word for both the tedious minutiae on personal Web sites and blogs, and the accidental slips of the tongue in public.

What a great word!  While it falls somewhat below the brilliant phrases created by the Bard of the Practical Blawgosphere, Mark Bennett, it still captures one of the fundamental realities of life online, that there is far more information provided, whether intentional or otherwise, than we usually need or want to know.

One of the other choices, cyberchondriac, also struck a note with me.  I think we need to craft a parallel word or phrase to describe lay-people who think that they’ve become lawyers by virtue of reading blawgs, statutes and caselaw.  Any thoughts?