At the end of my driveway, there is a sign that says “private.” I despise people driving up to the house unannounced and uninvited. I like my privacy, the quiet of the birds and critters. And yet, people routinely ignore the sign.  If I’m around, I greet them unpleasantly, asking why they thought the sign didn’t apply to them.

At Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr raised a very interesting question following on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision in Florida v. Jardines, where the Court “indicated that a police officer’s right to walk up to a front door of a person’s home Continue reading →

At A Public Defender, Gideon writes about the lessons he takes from the story told by a first-time criminal juror, Gerald Walker. Walker offers two posts, the first about his experience up to the point of selection, and the second about the trial and deliberations.  Aside from the minor factual inaccuracies of the account (neither 100 nor 111 Centre Street are brick buildings), which can be ignored as literary license, Walker’s account is as revealing in what he doesn’t get as what he does.

Gideon writes about Walker’s perceptions:

Gerry walked into the courthouse somewhat of an idealist and instead left fully aware the system works not on grand notions of truth and justice but rather on the individual perceptions and agendas of everyone with a dog in the fight – and mostly those who don’t have one: jurors. Continue reading →

Among the many lessons Rachel Rodgers has refused to learn, embracing Jay-Z as her ethical muse, in her perky zeal to make promote herself, keeping her personal information private is the newest casualty.  I keep thinking to myself as someone sends me a link to her newest cool promotion that I really don’t want to waste any more time writing about Rachel, but then she manages to come up with something new that compels scrutiny. And boy, did she do so this time.

I share these with you because I wanted to know numbers back when I was starting my virtual law office and they weren’t available. I figure you might find this helpful when deciding whether you want to launch your own. Continue reading →

It was less than a week ago that 6th Circuit Judge John Rogers wrote that the specialty of an Oak Ridge emergency room doc, Michael LaPaglia, sanitized for the opinion as digital rectal insertion at the command of police and for whatever personal reasons may have popped up, was over.  Perhaps LaPaglia took the decision hard, just as he took the order to insert his fingers into the rectums of captive suspects to heart.

Via Knox News:

An Oak Ridge physician named in a federal lawsuit over an invasive rectal examination has been arrested on drugs and weapons charges following a domestic dispute at his Knoxville home. Continue reading →

James Weyant, a 46-year-old with underwear issues, was shot when confronted by an Altoona, Pennsylvania, police officer in an alley at about four in the morning.  It seems Weyant was carrying his pair of guitar hero boxers in his hand because the waist band had stretched some and they no longer stayed put.  The officer, Mark Sprouse, mistook the underpants for a gun and shot Weyant.

Blair County District Attorney Richard A. Consiglio said in June that Sprouse was investigating the “suspicious actions of a civilian in a dark alley” when the officer was confronted by a man holding black underwear that appeared at the time to be a weapon. Continue reading →

Amanda Ripley’s book, The Smartest Kids in the World, and how they got that way, shook the American educational academy to its core because, as it turned out, she wasn’t talking about our kids. As Daniel Willingham explains in his review of the book:

Ripley sets out to tell the education success stories of three countries: Finland and South Korea (whose 15 year olds score very high on the PISA test) and Poland (offered as an example of a country in transition, and making significant progress).

What’s Ripley’s answer to the subtitle? Continue reading →

While the NSA may be good to sell a few t-shirts, it’s small-time.  If you want somebody who knows how to really intrude into your privacy, meet AT&T.  Can you hear me now?  From the New York Times:

The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant. Continue reading →

When the story broke in the Village Voice in May, 2010, it was less revelation than confirmation. Police Officer Adrian Schoolcraft had recorded more than 1000 hours of roll calls, locker room discussion and lectures inside Bed-Stuy’s 81st Precinct, and it was no longer what people thought or remembered, but the actual damning words of his department superiors.

Graham Rayman, who wrote the series of articles for the Voice, has produced a book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, that would appear from a distance to be about the “shocking” revelations of what Schoolcraft uncovered. Continue reading →

The American Civil Liberties Union scored a huge win in the District of Oregon with the opinion of Judge Anna Brown in Latif v. Holder. The suit was brought on behalf of a bunch of people with terrorist-y sounding names who showed up at the airport all ready to hop on a plane and munch peanuts, only to be told that it ain’t happening.  Some were told they were on the “No Fly List.” Most weren’t told much of anything at all, aside from their patronage was not wanted.

The case was carefully constructed, as plaintiffs with names like Ibraheim Mashal weren’t scary terrorists, but veterans of the United States Marine Corps. Continue reading →

Remember when twitter was new, and people were busy making up those cute words that twitterers just adored using? Tweeple and tweets? Just add “tw” before a word and you were one of the cool kids on twitter.  Thankfully, that idiocy died, as did such other nonsense as #FollowFriday.

To the extent twitter had a place in social media, it was as an extremely limited medium for communication that allowed people to share tiny bits of thought Continue reading →