If you’ve followed Patrick at Popehat for any length of time, you will know that he’s got a short fuse.  Not a bad fuse, but a short one.  He’s not the sort of guy one would want to piss off.  But some telemarketer who called himself “Brian” did so, and riled Patrick up real good with just two words.  Bad move.

It seems that Brian called Patrick from “card services.”  You know “card services,” this nice folks who call each and every one of us regularly to let us know that they can reduce our credit card interest rates.  These fine and helpful people, along with the nice people who want to extend our auto warranty, have a recorded message requiring us to hit 1 to speak with a representative.  Most of the time, if the wrong word comes out of your mouth first, the next sound you hear is “click”.  I always say the wrong thing when I press 1, because I always hear “click”.  They do not seem to have much respect for the federal “do not call” registry.

Patrick said the wrong thing as well, but he didn’t hear click.  Instead, he heard two words that still resonate in his ears. The sound is not pleasing.

Patrick says he’s determined to find the nice folks at card services and make them unhappy.  He’s got a number on his caller ID, but I suspect he won’t find anyone at the other end of the phone in Omaha.  The word is that these people hang out in the Orlando, Florida area.  Apparently, this is where they train for gainful employment at Disney World.

The question I have is somewhat different than Patrick’s.  I don’t ask where they are so I can fly down to Florida on the next Airbus, rent a wreck to drive to their boiler room and beat the living daylights out of Brian.  Rather, I wonder why, given that these folks seem to call, well, everyone there is on a daily basis, no one from our federal government has seen fit to shut them down. 

Sure, this isn’t a terrible crime in the sense of murder or possession of cartoon pornography, but still it seems to be beyond the ability of the ordinary citizen to fix, and in violation of a few federal laws.  Of course, it can have some very harmful consequences, whether by tying up a phone line when needed in an emergency, or interrupting something critical under the mistaken belief that the call is legitimate.  But it’s the pervasiveness of the problem that seems to demand that it be dealt with.  Few issues affect as many people as this, a credit to autodialing.

My guess is that the government is far too busy doing border searches for terrorists and pornographers to spend its time tracking down telemarketers.  I can well understand, given the danger pornographers present to our homeland security, but doubt that it would really require that much of a dedication of scarce resources that it couldn’t be done.

Here’s my thought.  All that would be needed is two special agents and a geek, preferably a hacker.  The two agents will only be needed for the collar and processing; they don’t bring much else to the table.  The government need only create a contest for geeks to locate the source of these telemarketing calls, sifting through the fake telephone numbers to their home server, and making it blow up.  Then the agents swoop in and cuff the big guys, who are likely an unattractive married couple.  It seems like it’s always an unattractive married couple doing this sort of stuff.

And you really wouldn’t have to offer much of a prize to the geek to who did the dirty work.  A nice badge for the website and bragging rights would likely be all the incentive they need.  Hacking is less a matter of reward than the pride of being able to beat the system.

If this seems too much trouble, how about finding out where the credit card money went from those where are taken in by these telemarketers.  Hard as it is to imagine, somebody has to actually agree to pay these nice folks or they would be forced to go back to their day jobs at Dairy Queen.

It just strikes me that even though these telemarketing calls are more annoyance than anything else, anything that annoys essentially everyone in the country, including Patrick, might be worthy of a little attention.  Come on, government.  You can find a crime for pretty much everyone.  You can fix this.  I know you can.

There once was a time when people chose to be lawyers for a reason.  They wanted to defend criminals, or put them away. They wanted to try cases.  Their mother or father was a lawyer.  The reasons are endless; but the reason wasn’t to make money any way they could. 

Lawyers sometimes ended up in a practice area they didn’t anticipate. Life just worked out that way.  If they found that they enjoyed it and were good at it, great.  If not, they struggled to find their way into a different practice area.  Not everybody is cut out to be a litigator.  Not everybody is cut out to be a transactional lawyer.  Hey, we’re people. We have things we prefer to do, just like everybody else. Nothing wrong with that.

Once we found a niche in law that suited us, we worked at it. We developed the skills necessary to do our job well, to know our business.  After all, what good is a lawyer who lacks the capability of performing within his niche?  Worse still, clients would entrust this niche lawyer with their needs, and if the lawyer couldn’t produce, then he would fail to serve his clients adequately.  This is the antithesis of performing a lawyer’s duty, the taking of a fee from a client without the ability to deliver the quality of services promised.  This is law at its worst.

This is why I found Adrianos Faschetti’s post at Grant Griffith’s ignominiously-named Blog for Profit deeply disturbing.  Adrianos explains the background:

The thought of becoming an “expert” in 6 months may seem impossible to you. But I did it and I’m going to show you how.
But first let me share my story with you a bit because I think it’s instructive.

It all started in March of 2008.

I was struggling to make ends meet as a solo attorney and I was desperately trying to find a way to finally break through and make a better living. I did just about everything you can think of to generate income from typical networking to ‘harassing’ attorneys in the courthouse to rustle up some work.

I was at a really low point in my life. There is nothing like knowing that you have a lot to offer others and at the same time consistently finding it difficult to pay the bills.

I got hired to handle an Internet Defamation case.

That happened less than 2 years ago and now people call me from all over the United States seeking my advice on Internet Defamation. I don’t say this to brag. I say this to motivate you to find your own wonderful obsession and to share it with others.

Now I know some of you might be thinking, “I thought you would show us how to become an expert in 6 months. You’ve been doing this for 2 years!”

Let me be clear. I believe I became an “expert” on the subject in less than 6 months because I studied it like crazy and few people knew anything about it. However, I certainly became an expert within 6 months because Google said I was.

And one thing is for sure: You are what Google says you are.

And one thing is for sure: You are what Google says you are.

I chose Internet Defamation for a number of reasons:

• I noticed that almost no one was writing about it. And even the blogs that did discuss Internet Defamation only did so on occasion (it wasn’t the main focus of the blog).
  
• Internet Defamation seemed to be a common problem that had potential for growth. I saw that more and more businesses were going online (duh) and that more and more people were venting their frustrations about people/businesses online.
  
• I knew I could master the subject in a short period of time because it was new. The internet as we know it is only about 15 or 16 years old. It’s not as if I was aiming to learn everything about securities law or real property law (which has been developed over a much longer period of time). This made it easy for me to become an “expert” in the subject.
  
• I liked the subject. You don’t need to like something to master it, but it’s a lot more fun that way.

This is obvious so I won’t spend a lot of time on it. Starting a blog on California Defamation forced me to learn about the subject. This forced me to become an expert on the subject. You should start a blog too if you haven’t already.

Nope.  No 9/11 post.

While this will come as a shock to some, writing a blawg requires a great deal of restraint.  It’s awfully easy to use it as a mechanism to vent about one’s day to day feelings, whether misery or elation.  Doing so often requires some explanation of the day’s activities, not to mention provides the reader with some clue as to why the writer is feeling that particular way.

While this may be fine for the basement pundit, it’s not acceptable for a lawyer.  We cannot blawg about our cases, our clients.  It’s that darned confidentiality thing, as an Illinois public defender found out the hard way.  From Legal Profession Blog :

Under the carefully balanced regimen to collect evidence of drunk driving, a police officer can request that a driver submit to a breathalyser test and a driver can refuse.  If the driver refuses, there is a giveback that he will lose his driving privileges for a period of time as well as have his refusal available for use as evidence against him.  For anyone still wondering how the trade-off plays out, no cop stopped for drunk driving has ever agreed to blow unless he was certain he would pass.

Apparently, this regimen isn’t good enough anymore in the war against drunk driving.  From the “>Idaho Press-Tribune, via Packratt at Injustice Everywhere :

Nampa police are being trained so they can take blood draws in the field to determine whether drivers are under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Sgt. Matthew Pavelek said in a news release Monday the Police Department recently took part in a program that trains officers to be qualified phlebotomists — blood-draw technicians. The training is funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and is presented by the College of Western Idaho.

Pavelek said that by having police officers trained to take blood, they are able to conduct blood draws on suspected DUI motorists who do not consent to breath or other chemical testing during impaired-driver related investigations.

The consequence for refusal to blow into the magic black box just became a whole lot more serious.  The point of the program is to reduce the cost of obtaining a blood test by eliminating the middle man, the cost of having the blood test done at a hospital, and allowing the cop on the street to do it himself.

The article makes no mention, but I would assume that a search warrant would still be required before a police officer would be permitted to stick a needle in anyone’s arm.  I’m going to proceed on this assumption because the alternative is unthinkable.  Given that the Washington State Supreme Court has just upheld the use of forced blood testing pursuant to a warrant, it seems to be the trend.  Whether it’s a better trend than forced catheterization is a personal matter.

On one level, this spells the death of refusal.  Whereas our right to say no was once part of a arguably balanced scheme designed to allow the individual some measure of personal freedom, it now succumbs to forced intrusion into our veins at the hands of the police.  While a warrant requirement might remove some taint of police use at will, these warrants will be provided over the phone, ex parte.  You can bet that the call won’t be made to the judge who is inclined to scrutinize such applications, if there is such a judge, and that the carefully scripted mantra to obtain a warrant will be memorized by every officer on the road.  In other words, don’t expect many warrants to be refused.

But consider the image of roadside blood draws on dash cam videos.  Whether it’s mom with three kids in the minivan, or grandma moving too slowly, or a large man unhappy about being stopped, the vision of police officers thrusting a needle into the arm of the suspect is shocking.  It’s hard enough to find a vein and draw blood under normal circumstances.  At least it’s hygienic in a hospital.  Picture it with a struggling suspect on the roadside.

In the quest to eliminate drunk driving, the tools are expanding as the rights are diminishing.  Whether this tool is too reminiscent of Marathon Man, too painful and potentially harmful, has yet to be seen, though its potential for error and abuse is palpable.  And the liability may dwarf even the handiest of law enforcement tools, the taser.

Is there no line beyond which the zeal to nail drunk drivers won’t cross?  While the MADD activists will invoke the image of dead children to justify the forced roadside blood draws, this won’t bring much comfort to the driver forcibly held on the ground while a cop jabs a needle in his arm.

And if this goes too far when it comes to drunk drivers, imagine how it will be for those who pissed off a cop and are “tested” to remind them who’s boss?  This is a very bad idea, and I hope one that finally pushes the envelope too far.

Update:  And the New York Times catches up to this story.  Some additional background, and note the simplistic explanation of Schmerber (per Gamso’s comment).  The Times story also makes clear that this isn’t about the officer taking the suspect to the hospital to draw blood, but doing it on the spot:

I would imagine that a lot of people would be wary of having their blood drawn by an officer on the hood of their police vehicle,” said Steve Oberman, chairman of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ committee on driving while intoxicated.

Once they are back on patrol in Nampa, in southwestern Idaho, they will draw blood from any suspected drunken driver who refuses a breath test. They will use force if necessary, including getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect, Ms. Watson said.

There’s a roadside image for you, not to mention an interesting trade-off of law enforcement versus the right not to have the government stick a needle in your arm.

By all accounts, oral argument before the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission did not go well for the proponents of McCain-Feingold and limitations on corporate cash overwhelming the political process.  Even the New York Times has given up the ghost of anticipating a ruling that would prohibit corporate contributions from corrupting politics, begging instead for a decision limited to the rather peculiar facts of the case, that it acceptable for big money to fund Hillary, The Movie, for broadcast on pay per view.

While there is certainly a conceptual ledge to stop the slide down the slippery slope of unfettered free speech when it comes to corporate political funding, there is similarly a purist’s concern that gaming free speech to inhibit its exercise by those who can, and will, corrupt politics hits at the heart of this fundamental right.  On the one hand, multinational corporate cash does not reflect the political speech of people, and may well represent the ideological views of foreigners who own the corporations, and clearly dwarfs, and thus minimizes if not undermines, the ability of individuals to exercise their right to political speech.  All this is certainly true, even though the conservative wing of the court appears to ignore it.

The conservatives also seemed incredulous that vast amounts of corporate money flooding into campaigns could be seen as corrupting the system. We agree with Senator John McCain, who told reporters after the argument that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

Walking past the Austin Healey dealership in New York, Walter Cronkite made an impulse decision to walk inside and buy himself one.  For those of you who wonder why a fellow today would drive a 40+ year old car as fast he can around a tight corner, perhaps this can explain.



If this hasn’t made it clear, then you’re hopeless.