I have nothing against Kelly Clarkson. I know she won American Idol and has gone on to great success as a singer, which I think is terrific. That people have such talent is wonderful. As for Macklemore, I’m afraid I have no idea who that is, and may look for a Youtube video later just to find out.

The title is a quote from David Brooks’ column last week in the New York Times, simply entitled “The Thought Leader.”  My buddy, Kevin O’Keefe, has been using the phrase for years, and I’ve always hated it, ridiculed anyone claiming it and made fun of Kevin for using it.  Not that he cares. The way Brooks defines it, it’s worse than hipster.

The Thought Leader is sort of a highflying, good-doing yacht-to-yacht concept peddler. Each year, he gets to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative, where successful people gather to express compassion for those not invited. Continue reading →

Before the report of President Obama’s independent task force to review the National Security Agency’s aggregation of every bit of metadata generated, there were two working assumptions. First, given that Obama hand-picked his task force, it would return a report that mirrored his proposals for reform, which largely had to do with the color of the wallpaper at the NSA and more infomercials like the 60 Minutes exposé by masterful shill John Miller.

As it turned out, the task force did its job far better than anyone expected, causing the President to include discussions of matching new curtains with the wallpaper. From the New York Times:

Sure, Mr. Obama thanked his panel for making 46 recommendations to restore the rule of law and constitutional principles to government surveillance activities. (The number alone casts a bad light on the president’s repeated claims that there really was nothing wrong with surveillance policy.) And he promised to review those ideas and let us know next month which, if any, he intends to follow. Continue reading →

And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.  Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was nearly daily fodder around here for a while, as he was a never-ending source of abuse, irrationality and unconstitutional conduct. For reasons that make sense only to the voters of Maricopa County, he has nonetheless been re-elected Sheriff over and over.

Now, the voters of Maricopa County will pay for their choice. From the Phoenix New Times:

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors this afternoon voted unanimously to approve a $3.75 million settlement for New Times’ co-founders, whose false arrests in 2007 were orchestrated by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Continue reading →

The things done to David Eckert were horrific and inexcusable, but if there is a saving grace to them, at least they were done pursuant to a search warrant.  No, it’s not much comfort that a judge approved of the rape of a human being, except to those for whom process somehow makes the violation of a person palatable. But whenever it appears that we’ve reached bottom, that it can’t go any lower, boom.

Via Jacob Sullum at Reason:

The lawsuit, filed yesterday by the ACLU chapters in Texas and New Mexico, says the plaintiff, a 54-year-old New Mexico resident identified in the complaint as Jane Doe, was crossing the bridge between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso after visiting a family friend last December when she was chosen at random for “additional screening.” This “secondary inspection” involved a pat-down during which an agent “inserted her finger in the crevice of Ms. Doe’s buttocks”—a rather startling incursion inasmuch as the agents at this point had no basis to suspect that the woman was carrying contraband. But they were just getting started. Continue reading →

Sure, a kid like Maverick will puff the living crap out of himself to make a buck, but then he’s just some desperate baby solo.  All the Biglaw boys and girls laugh; “ha! look at what shitlaw has to do to make a living. We’re so much cooler.”

Meet Bracewell Giuliani.  Not the biggest of Biglaw, and not quite the whitest of shoes, but definitely not one of us. They are important. They do big cases. They are, well, Biglaw. A Vault 100 firm that in 2005, added the name of “America’s most famous former mayor to its nameplate,” who also happens to be the absolute last person you would want to be anywhere near if you were the target of a federal investigation or prosecution. But whatever. Continue reading →

It’s that time of year again! Time to recognize the effort and thoughtfulness of criminal law blawgers with our annual Best Criminal Law Blawg Post, which has been dedicated to the memory of our dear friend Joel Rosenberg.

Unlike the other Beauty Pageants in the blawgosphere, the idea here is to provide a platform to revisit the excellent work done over the past year.  Past winners of the JDog prize are luminaries of the blawgosphere,  Ohio’s Jeff Gamso, Connecticut’s  Gideon Strumpet, Texas’  Mark Bennett and Arizona’s Matt Brown. Continue reading →

The snitch gave the police a tip that might strike a Yankee as odd, but apparently sounded credible enough to the police anti-narcotics squad (as opposed to the pro-narcotics squad in Harris County) in Parker County, Texas.  Via Raw Story:

Officers in Parker County took Michael Fred Wehrenberg and some associates into custody in summer 2010, after watching his home for about a month as part of a drug investigation.

A confidential informant told police that Wehrenberg and others were “fixing to” cook methamphetamine, and investigators searched the house while he and his friends stood outside in handcuffs.

Police said they found pseudoephedrine, stripped lithium batteries and materials used to make meth and then asked a judge to grant them a warrant to search the house.

What does “fixing to” cook meth mean? Continue reading →

Seth Godin has a remarkable ability to deal with the complexity of human behavior in short, astute bursts, and his posts have provided me with a great deal of insight. But as with all bloggers (myself included), not every post is a winner.  This one was a mutt:

Vampires, of course, feed on something that we desperately need but also can’t imagine being a source of food.

You have metaphorical vampires in your life. These are people that feed on negativity, on shooting down ideas and most of all, on extinguishing your desire to make things better.

Are there “vampires,” assuming you’re into the fashion trend Continue reading →

If criminal defense lawyers think they have it hard, it seems as though we’re living large compared to the misery of a prosecutor’s life.  Or so says a commenter named “Paul” to Judge Richard Kopf’s Hercules and the Umpire post on Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s Olsen dissent.

So it’s clear, Paul gives no last name nor identifying information to pinpoint where, in the spectrum of Justice (with a capital “J”) he lives, but from the content of his comment, it’s clear that he’s telling the tale of woe from behind a rock in the dark corner of a federal courthouse.

“[E]pidemic”?  No.  Just hyperbole from Judge Kozinski.  But that is not surprising. Continue reading →

Despite the original claims by Taser International that its weapon of choice was non-lethal, the trail of dead bodies it left behind really screwed with the advertising budget.  Not even their own special cause of death did the trick.  What else could Taser do?

Via The Verge:

On the day before Thanksgiving this year, international stun gun and cop-cam company Taser International, Inc. announced it had given up its fight in two major legal battles over “suspect injury or death.” In a 275-word , the company’s chief financial officer said it would pay a total of $2.3 million in settlements to plaintiffs who had sued the company in product liability cases. Continue reading →