The New York Times Opinionator column offered a hard slap in the face to every helicopter mom: Parental involvement does not necessarily enhance a child’s educational future.  Based on a three-decade longitudinal study, University of Texas sociology prof Keith Robinson and Duke sociology prof Angela Harris reported their findings:

Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would say, “of course it does.” But evidence from our research suggests otherwise. In fact, most forms of parental involvement, like observing a child’s class, contacting a school about a child’s behavior, helping to decide a child’s high school courses, or helping a child with homework, do not improve student achievement. In some cases, they actually hinder it.

This, of course, cannot possibly be.  After all, everyone knows that the more involved parents are in their children’s education, the better off children will be. Schools say so. The government says so, and has passed laws, rules and regs based on it, and, well, everybody knows. Everybody. Continue reading →

Amongst lawyers, there isn’t much talk of Avvo anymore. Way back when, Avvo was not merely an upstart challenging the hegemony of Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyer ratings, which were utterly meaningless to anyone outside of the profession (what the heck does “AV Preeminent” mean to a normal person?), but an opportunity for lawyers to lay claim to a numerical rating they could promote to consumers that would be understandable and, assuming the consumer naïve enough, persuasive.

Yeah, it was nonsensical, but that’s not a bug in the internet age.  The problem for Avvo, of course, is that there is no money to be made in handing out free ratings.  So in the dark of night, Avvo morphed from a lawyer rating service to a lawyer marketing.  And much to my surprise and chagrin, Avvo has made a go of it.

Avvo has attracted $37.5 million in fresh capital, a huge capital infusion that the Seattle company will use to grow its marketplace for matching attorneys and clients. Total funding in Avvo — founded seven years ago by former Expedia general counsel Mark Britton — now stands at $60.5 million. Continue reading →

A continuing issue with the police is that they take care of their own, meaning that the rules they apply to the rest of us, often with far more force than can possibly be justified, don’t apply to them.  Yet, the Gothamist offers a story that defies this:

Authorities say that at 2:33 a.m. on Thursday, 30-year-old Jeffrey Balzotti, an NYPD sergeant, was arrested while allegedly driving drunk within the confines of the 10th precinct. He was charged with a DWI and driving recklessly.

On Friday morning, at around 4:30 a.m., the NYPD says Jose Vanderpool, a 30-year-old police officer, was pulled over in Queens and charged with a DWI. The Post reports he was involved in a collision on 32nd Avenue in Jackson Heights, and refused a breathalyzer.

And less than an hour later at 5:05 a.m., authorities say NYPD sergeant Donald Stewart, 34, was arrested near Fulton and Boyland Streets in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He was also charged with a DWI.

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In response to the question of why, Nebraska Senior District Court Judge Richard Kopf provided a candid and detailed answer.  His answer consists of nine points, delivered with his usual aplomb and sense of humor, and with remarkable honesty.

This is noted because it’s easy to offer pat answers, the ones we fall back on regularly to win the point and avoid reproach, but which aren’t true.  Judge Kopf has answered with unvarnished truth, which is why he gets himself into a jam on the interwebz so often.

By my reading, Judge Kopf has largely validated Harold’s revelations, that it’s just a matter of going with the odds, and the odds favor the police.  A commenter notes that the explanations bear the scent of rationalizations, to which Judge Kopf asks, what, then, would be his motive to rationalize? I’ll take a stab. Continue reading →

For a case that could have, should have, disappeared with a swift oops and click of the delete button, it has reached a conclusion with the unfortunately unsatisfying result of no one being saved and a government so utterly impotent, incompetent, and unworthy as to warrant a brief chuckle.  If only it wasn’t our government.

The pathetic tale of how Stanford Ph.D. student Rahinah Ibrahim wound up on the no-fly list, not for any distant, evil conspiracy, or hyper-technical connection to anyone whose underpants might potentially burst into flames, but because someone getting a government paycheck ticked the wrong box, was bad enough. So someone screwed up. You’re a big country, United States. Own up to the error, fix it, apologize and move on.  But no, that wasn’t the way it would happen. And no, we may be large in size, but puny in spirit.

The trial was a fiasco, with the government screwing the opposition in deceitful, absurd ways.  Judge William Haskell Alsup, of the Northern District of California, was making all the right noises to suggest that he was about to explode, to teach the disingenuous lying scumbags who claim to represent us a damn good lesson.  But when the last huff and puff was over, it turned out to be no more than noise, the empty threats that never seem to happen when the targets of vitriol suck the government’s teet. Continue reading →

There won’t be much “value added” in this post, as its purpose is to direct readers to Doug Berman’s post at Sentencing Law & Policy on the fiasco of Cesar Huerta Cantu.  In that case, a typo, conceded by all, in the Guidelines calculations went unnoticed by all, including Cantu’s defense lawyer.

While this is not merely inexcusable, but frankly incomprehensible, it happened. When Cantu discovered the error, he sought to correct it via a §2255 petition, which the government opposed as untimely.   The depth of disingenuousness of the government in this case is so low as to shake any confidence in prosecutorial discretion.

The more I reflect on the typo-correction sentence commutation of federal prisoner Cesar Huerta Cantu (basics here), and especially after re-reading this 2255 dismissal order that followed Cantu’s own effort to have a court fix its own significant sentencing error, the more disgusted I feel about the modern federal sentencing system and especially about the U.S. Department of Justice and those federal prosecutors most responsible for Cesar Cantu’s treatment by our Kafkaesque system.

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Protip: If you get the opportunity to nail down the duct tape contract for the Alachua County, Florida, jail, seize it. It’s going to be huge!

On the one hand, Circuit Judge Robert Groeb’s steadfast belief in the right of a criminal defendant to be present for all critical stages of his or her case is admirable.  After all, it’s their life, and they should certainly be there to watch it go down the drain.  But his methods leave something to be desired.

On the 16th day of April, Judge Groeb issued an order of some concern.  It starts out innocuously enough:

In order to ensure that a defendant’s right to be present during the critical stages of his or her case, as required by Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure 3.130 and 3.180, is protected, the undersigned is implementing the following policy and procedure which shall apply to: (1) all courtroom proceedings arising out of Division ill ofthe Criminal Division ofthe Alachua County Circuit Court; and, (2) all first appearances by video from the Alachua County Jail presided over by the undersigned.

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Charlie Eipper is a member of the SWAT team in Wichita Falls, Texas, but his team is more special than most.  He suffers from the usual rationalizations of the “Warrior Cop“:

Eipper has considered himself a professional warrior in the service of his country for the past 23 years. He served three years as a helicopter pilot in the Army, then 16 years on the Wichita Falls Police Department SWAT team as a sniper and team leader of the gang unit.

But he’s written a self-published book to explain his perspective:

When he killed a man in the line of duty on Jan. 10, 1999, he was confident that Jesus Christ condoned — even supported — his use of deadly force.

He spelled out his convictions — and the Bible’s support for them — in his book “Jesus Christ on Killing,” self-published March 5.

Continue reading →

At WaPo Conspiracy, Chicago lawprof Will Baude picked up on five lying Chicago cops (which five?  this five. Not to be confused with any other five, or four, or six).  He calls the story remarkable, not because cops lie, but because they got caught lying.

One by one, five police officers took the witness stand at the Skokie courthouse late last month for what would typically be a routine hearing on whether evidence in a drug case was properly obtained.

But in a “Perry Mason” moment rarely seen inside an actual courtroom, the inquiry took a surprising turn when the suspect’s lawyer played a police video that contradicted the sworn testimony of the five officers — three from Chicago and two from Glenview, a furious judge found.

Okay, okay, settle down. Lest you feel all validated, bear in mind that the lie was proven by video. Yet again, we’re stuck in “but for video” mode. Continue reading →

Within the realm of blawgs, one stands out above all others.  While there is blog in its blood, SCOTUSBlog has long since left behind the days when Tom Goldstein ran it from his kitchen table in a bathrobe. If there is a question on anything Supreme Court, it’s the first place everyone turns, from the Times to me.

If there is a “legitimate” award handed out to a blog, SCOTUSBlog wins it. Like a Peabody. Heck, they won’t even let me see a Peabody unless I buy a movie ticket.  But there’s SCOTUSBlog, proudly accepting another win.  And did I mention it became a business?

But the real test of legitimacy is whether those outside the realm accept you as the real thing, as an entity of sufficient value that you are treated with the level of respect with which others are treated.  SCOTUSBlog took that test, and got spanked. Continue reading →