Is Social Media (brain) Dead?

Sometimes it’s like living on another planet, where the laws of physics don’t apply. Via Heather Morse Milligan at the Legal Watercooler.


Is the Business Card Dead??

In this new age of Twitter and LinkedIn, I’m wondering: Is the business card dead?


When I think about it, I hardly ever carry a business card these days, and, when I do, it’s usually quite purposeful (I’m going to a conference and I need cards to win prizes in the exhibit hall).


Usually, when I meet someone professionally, we pull out our smartphones and connect on LinkedIn, or follow one another on Twitter. And I am not alone in this experience.


I’m sure Heather would never lie about something like this, so it must be true.  She even used two question marks in the title, demonstrating how important the question is.  One mark wouldn’t do.

I carry business cards.  I don’t hand them out to everyone I see, but then, I never did.  I give them to people who ask for them, who need one of my cards for whatever reason.  What has never happened to me, ever, is someone pulling out their smartphones and asking for my twitter name.  Never.

Heather says she’s not alone in her experience, and I’ve no reason to doubt her.  Indeed, she backs up her assertion with such legal luminaries as David Boise Jay Shepherd and Dan Hull Lindsey ‘How I Love Twitter’ Griffith, both of whom apparently also pull out their smartphones so they can connect with their peers.  They just aren’t my peers.

There’s nothing wrong with Heather’s use of tech in lieu of business cards as a means of providing her vital statistics to others, provided her others are similarly beloved of shiny toys.  Hang out with people at the ABA Techshow and expect them to gush over tech.  It makes perfect sense.  But never confuse what pleases a bunch of techies with what works with the rest of the known universe, where the laws of physics still apply.

But my world isn’t Heather’s world;



Twitter, for me, is about identifying people in a crowded room that I want to talk to. I didn’t need to connect with 1000 legal marketing professionals last week … but I easily found the people I needed to meet, and they were usually broadcasting loud and clear via their social networks.


I’ve broadened and deepened relationships I have identified on Twitter, by inviting many of these people into my inner-circle via my personal Facebook.


I use the social media tools available to me to reach out and connect on a daily basis, either personally or professionally. I know to whom I can turn when I need to brainstorm an idea, get a referral, celebrate or commiserate.


She’s standing in the same room as people, and rather than say hello, look them in the eye or shake their hand, she reads their twit.  No need to be in the room at all, when she can broaden and deepen her relationships by inviting these folks into her inner-circle on Facebook.  Like I said, the laws of physics no longer apply.

Picture the day when some great potential client asks you for your business card and instead you pull out your iToy and shove it in his face.  He looks at you like a fruitcake, pondering how he could have been so horribly wrong to seek your telephone number, and takes a few steps backwards before whatever disease that’s affected you becomes airborne.  The real world, the one with regular people who engage in normal communication with other people they presume to be regular, does not live by iPhone.  Maybe someday, but surely not today.

On the other hand, Heather write about a QR code that we can put on our business cards that contains the information an iPhone can suck in.  It could make for an interesting conversation starter, if not a simple way to share info with those for whom tech is a religion.  My next batch of business cards will likely include such a code.  It could be useful, and it’s not likely to hurt.

Therein lies the point of tech, constantly missed by its gurus.  It’s just a tool, something we can adopt if it seems useful and helpful, in doing what we do.  If it makes life easier and serves some useful function, by all means should we make it work for us.  But when we forget that it’s just a tool and start treating it as more important than a firm handshake, a well-polished shoe or a sound legal argument, there’s no amount of technology that will save us from ourselves.

The business card isn’t dead.  Nor is social media, though it’s utility remains an open question.  When I order up my next batch, it will still be on good quality stock with engraved lettering.  It won’t, however, include my twitter name, no matter how many social media ninjas tell me it should. 

The Fix Is In

The newest scandal about to erupt across New York is ticket fixing.  Seriously, ticket fixing.  The allegations are that a couple dozen officers have been fixing tickets for friends and family.  As if this comes as a surprise, particularly given that tickets are discretionary in the first place. 

From the New York Times.


While the law enforcement official and several lawyers involved in the matter called the wrongdoing relatively minor, the case could have serious implications for the department because of the large number of officers thought to have participated, either by asking for a ticket to be fixed or by doing the actual fixing.


And the accusations will most likely anger countless New Yorkers, some of whom see the specter of quotas behind summonses they receive and whose response to a ticket is generally more straightforward — pay the fine and have points added to their driver’s license.


It’s not that any corruption, even little league stuff like this, is acceptable.  We have every right to expect New York’s bluest to behave themselves, even if they have the ability to make tickets disappear to Aunt Matilda won’t get points on her license.  And getting a free cup of joe and a donut is wrong too.  It really is.

But as scandals go, this one shocks only for it’s triviality in the face of ongoing, systemic problems.  If you’re unfamiliar with these, read Radley Balko, who keeps a running log.  Even the times can’t get too worked up over this.



It is a practice that by all accounts has been around almost as long as the traffic laws: fixing a traffic ticket.


In the annals of small-bore corruption, there are few things more commonplace than a police officer’s making a ticket disappear for a friend or relative. Yet now this curb-level cronyism is threatening to erupt into a New York Police Department scandal.


The cynic might call this a diversionary tactic, something to take our mind and eyes off more serious issues while getting the sense that the police and Bronx DA Rob Johnson are working very hard to clean up their own backyard.  And indeed, it may well be, given how the talk is about grand jury testimony, union officials being integrally involved in this widespread conspiracy.  If somebody is fixing tickets, let the cops pinch them and prosecution them.  It can’t be all that hard to tell when a ticket is written and disappears in the age of computers, not to mention numbered tickets.

Then, of course, there’s professional courtesy, where cops don’t ticket other cops. No mention of any grand jury testimony about drunk cops running down pedestrians getting a free pass.  That must be beyond the scope of the investigation.  They wouldnt want to dilute a decent scandal by tossing in something really serious.

Tom Puccio, defending one of the PBA cops, offered this defense;


“The practice has been in existence probably since the first ticket was issued by the Police Department,” he said. “It cannot be condoned, but on the other hand, it should not be prosecuted.”

How trivial can something be when the argument against it that cops have always been corrupt.  So what? 

Puccio is, of course, absolutely wrong.  Police corruption, at any level, is both wrong and a threat to the integrity of their job.  Given the power and authority placed in their hands, the idea that they can screw with the rules, any rules, emboldens their violation of rules and the harm that follows.  Corruption is a big deal, even if the cops have always been corrupt. 

The problem that goes unspoken here is that there are massive problems, from the stop and frisk program that violates the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers every year, to the the abuse of power, physical harm and lies used to justify it and cover it up.  That these big, no huge, problems go unnoticed while the scandal over ticket fixing hits the fan, is what makes this scandal laughable.

There’s much to fix.  Tickets included, but let’s try to fix some of the big stuff before we worry too much about the little stuff.

Says Who?

Writing stuff on the internet can bring some interesting reactions.  Some informative, occasionally brilliant, reactions.  Some nasty, ignorant reactions.  Lots of people out there.  Lots of reactions.  My pal, Mirriam Seddiq, has decided that if someone wants to write something nasty, they have to own it.

It was nice back when I didn’t know any better and I just let you have your say, not moderating your comments which were, on occasion, not so kind and frequently, not so clever.  But, I’m sorry, it’s you, not me.  Or maybe it’s me.  But we’re through.  I need a name.  I need to know who you are and someday soon I’ll move to a platform where you will have to put in a valid email address so I will know who you are.

This has long been a sore subject in the blawgosphere,  with some going the  real name route and others, like me, skirting the issue.  Mirriam offers her reasoning:

Your advice means nothing to me if I don’t know whether I should take it – are you a high school kind on the debate team, a lawyer who just graduated last year and feels that they should be able to advise the rest of us on how this system and this profession works, or a real live lawyer who has fought in the trenches and has something of substance to say?

This seems to be the perpetual dilemma for law bloggers, with the biggest problem that the former and latter don’t quite match up well. Yet, no one has as yet figured out a way to fix the problem.

Perhaps Mirriam’s decision was based on attacks by one anonymous commenter.  Whether a troll or merely someone who, for some inexplicable reason, just didn’t like her, she was disinclined to suffer some angry, nasty, stupid commenter.  She’s entitled.  Being a blawger may well subject a person to scrutiny of one’s peers, and indeed (in my view) it should.  But that doesn’t mean suffering the slings and arrows of anonymous attackers.

In the last few days, I’ve pondered the same question as well.  Someone decided that a post of mine was worthy of dissemination to a group of non-lawyer, freedom-loving, government-hating people, and they, in turn, decided that it was imperative that they voice their views.  While the upshot may well have been similar to my views on the subject of the post, the content of their comments was not.  They were mindless rants, presented in formats akin to conspiracy theorists in tin foil hats.  It’s not that I necessarily disagreed with their sentiments, but that their presentation was just horribly ignorant.  Frankly, it was embarrassing to have such a massive showing of stupidity on my blawg, even though they agreed with what I wrote.

Most of the comments never saw the light of day, whether because they involved bizarre interpretations of law (“we the people” means that we don’t have to follow any government’s law) or screamed for the overthrow of the government, or ranted about how the various perceived wrongs have destroyed, well, whatever the commenter didn’t want them to destroy.

These weren’t trolls at all, but a bunch of very angry people.  When I didn’t embrace them, they grew angry with me for not being sufficiently supportive.  It happens. 

To me, the real question was never the commenter’s name.  It’s no big deal to get a gmail account in the name of John Smith and use that name when commenting.  Some names, like The Last Sane Man on the Internet, informs me immediately that the commenter is a nutjob, as no sane person would call himself that.  But John Smith sounds like a perfectly normal name.  Unfortunately, it tell me nothing about who the commenter is.

If the comment is substantive, then knowledge about the commenter may be irrelevant.  The idea will either bear out or not.  But most comments, at least to some extent, are normative, expressing the commenter’s personal support for, or again, a particular position.  They often express feelings or impressions, and include anecdotal information in support of their position.  These mean nothing without know who the commenter is.

That’s what I want to know.  That’s what makes a comment meaningful to me, and to everyone else reading it.  If you’re not a lawyer, then your “legal advice” carries no weight.  If you’ve been in private practice for three weeks, then your perspective on the right and wrong of private practice isn’t particularly persuasive.  I’m sorry if you think every thought you have is of earth shattering importance, but it’s not.

My background is an open book, all laid out for the world to see.  Whether good or bad, it is what it is. If someone wants to know whether my views are substantiated by my experience, it’s all there to see.  Sometimes people will ridicule me because of it, but I can’t help that. My background is what it is, for better or worse.

What I seek is to have what I consider to be interesting discussions with interesting people who bring some knowledge to the table, from whatever source that is.  What I don’t seek is to have my blawg used as a soapbox by angry people who agree with me but offer nothing thoughtful or intelligent, just their expression of personal outrage backed up the ability to emphasize their point using the shift key.  Intelligent voices won’t get involved in discussions where lunatics have invaded, so merely allowing the rants to get out of control is death to real discussion.

Does this offend you, that I, the guy with his finger on the delete key, can be so arrogant in dismissing your very important comment because it fails to meet with my approval?  Tough nuggies.  This is my home.  You’re free to start your own blog and run it any damn way you please, but you don’t get to tell me how to run mine.

I hope Mirriam doesn’t feel too badly about moderating comments.  She’s got a very interesting and popular blawg, and that’s part of the price one pays for attracting readers.  But getting names won’t be the end of her problems.  It can be painful to delete comments from people who are sincere, but unless one wants to become the home to some very angry or crazy people, it’s the only answer.  And once the nutjobs take over a blawg, it’s not likely to attract much meaningful discussion amongst lawyers.

A Proper Sentence for a Murderer

Death?  Life without parole?  How about a promise to never do it again and a fine.  From the Texas Tribune :

As part of a settlement, the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists issued a reprimand against Dr. George Denkowski, whose testing methods have been sharply criticized by other psychologists and defense attorneys as unscientific. Denkowksi agreed not to conduct intellectual disability evaluations in future criminal cases and to pay a fine of $5,500. In return, the board dismissed the complaints against him.

Denkowski was the prosecution version of Dr. Death, testifying against 14 defendants who faced execution, two of whom have since been put to death, by concluding that they were intellectually competent to be killed.  What made Denkowski such a favored witness?


“What Denkowski has been doing is a pretty radical departure,” said Marc J. Tassé, director of the Ohio State University Nisonger Center and an expert in developmental disabilities. “There’s absolutely no scientific basis to his procedure.”

In other words, he just made up his own rules for determining that a defendant was intellectually suited for death, since the Supreme Court’s  Atkins v. Virginia decision held that executing the mentally retarded violated the 8th Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. 

It’s bad enough that convictions have been, are still being and are likely to continue to be obtained based on widely accepted, and completely unproven, pseudo-science.  But that prosecutors and judges allowed a psychologist to testify such that mentally retarded defendants could be sentenced to death is unfathomable.  Fortunately, not every judge before whom Denkowski appeared was brain dead.


In 2007, state District Judge Mark Ellis concluded in the case of death row inmate Daniel Plata that Denkowski’s methods did not align with accepted psychological practices and ethical guidelines. Ellis threw out the 2005 evaluation Denkowksi conducted, writing that it “must be disregarded due to fatal errors in … administration and scoring.” Plata’s sentence was commuted to life in 2008, and he is now at the Hodge Unit with other developmentally disabled prisoners.


Granted, it may be a stretch to call Denkowski a murderer, despite the fact that his contribution was critical in the deaths of two intellectually incompetent human beings.  After all, Denkowski just did as the prosecution asked of him, another laboring oar on the government’s boat of death.  Why single him out?

The problem raised by Denkowski’s testimony is that it demonstrated a monumental gap in not one, but three, levels of scrutiny.  As a psychologist, his groundless testimony should have caused his own professional policing agency, the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, to pull his license.  As a witness, the prosecuting attorneys who proffered this charlatan for the purpose of circumventing the Atkins prohibition should have been disbarred.  And as an expert witness, the judges who accepted his qualifications to opine on behalf of the prosecution should have been thrown off the bench.

One might suspect, these being capital cases, that the intense scrutiny to assure that defendants were not wrongfully sentenced to death would prevent this from happening.  Instead, Denkowski testified as a license psychologist on behalf of the prosecution as an expert witness, and two human beings are dead as a result.

If you think Denkowski got away with it too easy, consider what happened to the prosecutors and judges who were similarly complicit in the death sentences of 14, and executions of 2, relying on the testimony of George Denkowski.  And they are still fighting to keep defendants against whom Denkowski testified on death row.


State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, chairman of the Innocence Project board and a member of the Criminal Justice Committee, said every case involving Denkowski should be reviewed by the courts. “We cannot simply shrug our shoulders and sit by and watch while the state uses legal technicalities to execute these intellectually disabled men,” he said, “especially on the word of someone who is no longer permitted to make these kinds of determinations.”

Is it possible that life is so cheap that review of defendants sentenced to death on the word of this charlatan’s can even be in question?  If only they had the opportunity to pay a $5500 fine, like Dr. Denkowski.

H/T Pogo Was Right

The SJ Art Collection Grows

I am honored to announce that the foremost collection of fine art amongst American blawgs has just received a gift from the United Kingdom’s premier artist-blawger, CharonQC.




The Social Media Maven pronounces (2010)
Oil on Canvas
Charon

In the Collection of @ScottGreenfield


And it came to pass, when the Maven came down from the mount with the two tables of twitter rules  in Maven’s hand, when he came down from the mount, that Maven wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when @stephenfry and all the children of twitter saw the Maven, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.


And the Maven said… I have been a stranger in a strange land…. and I say unto you…whatever you tweet…happens…


I am humbled by M’lud’s generosity.

Cheap at Half the Price

Every once in a while, someone in the blogosphere makes a move that must inexplicably seem like a stroke of genius until someone else, usually either the young, old or infirm, tells them they’re nuts.  Just such a move was announced by the  Lawyerist,  Aaron Street’s attempt to pretend he has something to offer new lawyers who know less than he does.

This week, Lawyerist acquired Bitter Lawyer. We are excited to revive a great humor website, and we have big plans for its future.

In case this isn’t clear, the Lawyerist “acquired” a dead website.  You wouldn’t know it from the  Alexa blog rankings on Avvo, which put Bitter Lawyer in fourth place as I type (showing yet again why Alexa is goofy and a meaningless metric), but it’s been defunct since September, 2010 (as far as I can tell). 

If you never bothered with Bitter Lawyer before, it was a humor blog based on the world view of young unemployed lawyers who hate and blame the world for their personal misery.  From that point of view, it was very funny at first.  And then, like most attempts at humor, it grew strained and forced and unfunny.  The problem with one trick pony humor is that once the joke is told, it’s told.

In the past, I’ve described content on the Lawyerist as a mile wide and a millimeter deep.  I’m not just being kind when I say that.  No reader leaves the Lawyerist without being diminished as a sentient being.  Still, Aaron and his pal Sam Glover have tried to create something to pay for their Cheetos habit, and I give them credit for trying.

But the purchase of a dead website is a novel approach in the search for the nadir of the blawgosphere.  Bitter lawyer petered out because the joke got boring.  Other attempts at legal humor have similarly proven that it’s hard to be funny, and harder still to maintain it.  Not everybody can be Kevin Underhill, whose  Lowering the Bar has taken legal humor seriously for years, and is fresh and funny with every new post.  There hasn’t been another blawg capable of maintaining legal humor for more than a few posts.

The price for the acquisition was not disclosed, but confidential sources tell me it was nine dollars (US), six peanut M&Ms, three marbles (including one aggie) and a coupon for a half price latte at Starbucks.  If Aaron was a better negotiator, he could have kept four of the M&Ms for himself.

What will the Lawyerist gang do with Bitter Lawyer now that it owns the place?  Being funny isn’t something one buys.  Even if you can’t help but laugh at the Lawyerist content now, the humor is in the fact that it’s offered as serious advice for the rookie lawyer, with such gems as “never walk into court with your fly open or shirt tucked into your underpants, as it makes you look unprofessional.”  And it’s adoring fans find this advice critical in their mission to become filthy rich, successful lawyers.  Okay, maybe I exaggerate.  A bit.  But I didn’t make this up, Sam Glover’s how to start a law firm for under $3000, because new lawyers don’t need to waste money on legal research.

So why should anyone care that some vapid blog has purchased a defunct blog?  Because  Kevin O’Keefe posited that the blawgosphere is the new mentor for young lawyers.  Keith Lee at  An Associate’s Mind explains why this doesn’t work (and I plan to add his blog to my blogroll as soon as I can remember my new password).  And if you’ve read any of the small law columns at  Above the Law recently, where the  latest proposition is that lawyers don’t need business cards anymore, as they’ve been replaced by giving out twitter names, there will be no doubt that Keith is right.

And yet there are far more new lawyers who take comfort in the simplistic drivel at the Lawyerist than at the substantive blawgs about which Kevin speaks.  They also wrap themselves up in the dark humor of blaming everyone but themselves for their ill-conceived choice of becoming lawyers, the crux of Bitter Lawyer’s humor.

As absurd as this acquisition may seem on its surface, it reflects a far more sinister problem confronting the legal profession, that the next generation of lawyers prefers easy answers, someone to blame and nothing to interfere with happy hour.  Aaron Street is betting his M&Ms on it, and I’m betting that Aaron has a better feel for what new lawyers want than I do.

Many readers here take issues like the criminal justice system very seriously, appreciating that we hold people’s lives in our hands and have a duty to handle them with the utmost care and zeal.  The reason you should care about these collateral issues, the ones that don’t describe the latest outrage or show a video of another cop beating another person for breathing wrong, is that these are the next generation of hands into which lives are commended.  If you don’t connect the dots, we’re doomed to suffer young lawyers who think Bitter Lawyer is funny and everyone is to blame for their misery but themselves.

I would like to wish Aaron and Sam the best with their new acquisition.  I would like to, but I really hope it dies a quick and painful death, and that they put their efforts into a decent used car lot the next time they feel compelled to find a business venture. 

What Would A “Good Lawyer” Do?

The  WSJ Law Blog posts about the impending cuts to public defense, because there was all that fat in the budget to pay for PDs sitting in their oak paneled offices eating bon bons in the spare time.  The combination of the populist ideology of sharing the pain and the perpetual issue with the public’s prioritization of indigent defense falling slightly below limos for lesser public officials makes this a gimme.

Public defenders maintain that they should be insulated from budget cuts for two reasons, the first being that they were sorely underfunded before the recession came along.  Secondly, they point to the fact that states have a duty, enshrined in Gideon v. Wainwright, to provide indigent criminal defendants with the right to counsel.

[Head of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, Edward] Monahan told the WSJ that public defenders offices in the state already have average caseloads in excess of 450 per lawyer and that, with budget cuts, lawyers will have to represent more than 500 clients at any given time.

To the initiated, the arguments against cuts to public defense are obvious, strong and incontrovertible.  If it was severely underfunded before, what’s left to cut?  The answer is in the numbers, which Monahan says will be “more than 500 clients at any given time.”

Forget about the public defenders laid off in a climate of unemployment and few options.  There is no massive group of well-heeled criminal defendants with cash to burn unable to find counsel because lawyers are flush with retained cases. 

The counter is that funding to prosecutors is being cut as well, though the attempt at comparison would cause giggles but for the fact that there is nothing funny about any of this.  Prosecutors always have the option of not bringing more charges then they can prosecute, or clearing their desks when the caseload interfered with binge drinking.  Public defenders have to fit their binge drinking in whenever they can.

Of course, there’s nothing new about PDs suffering for their calling.  Public pretenders, tossed aside at the first opportunity for “real lawyers” without regard to anything other than the fact that defendants would rather be represented by a paid muskrat.  No respect.  This is reflected well in a comment to the WSJ post.



What trials? Almost every criminal case is plea bargained, no trial unless the defendant has a good lawyer. “Good lawyer” does not describe a public defender or court-appointed lawyer, for the most part. If the taxpayer paid defense counsel was any good, that guy wouldn’t be accepting a 500 client caseload.

Inside this deliberate smack is a bit of unexpected truth.  Would a “good lawyer” accept a 500 client caseload?

With the required caveat that many public defenders are terrific lawyers despite the fact that they’re despised by their clients, deemed unreal and unworthy because their services are free and treated like pariah widgets despite their efforts, there is no question but that no lawyer, from Clarence Darrow to Gerry Spence, capable of carrying 500 clients at a time and providing minimally adequate representation.

The problem is that public defenders are employees, given files and directed to handle them.  The problem is that public defenders, to some greater or lesser extent, feel a sense of duty toward their unappreciative clients to do what they can, meager as that may be, and not leave them standing in the well unrepresented, to be chewed up and spit out by a system that finds defendants and their rights a terrible nuisance.  Most public defenders want to defend.

But 500?  No outpouring of emotion or zeal can overcome the number.  Spread too thin doesn’t cover it. 

While criminal defense lawyers who work for a public defenders office, or do indigent defense, may feel an overwhelming sense of obligation toward their employer and their clients, there is a constraint that cannot be ignored.  You see, they are real lawyers.  They maintain an individual duty under the code of professional responsibility, whatever it’s called in your jurisdiction, to provide zealous representation, or at least minimally effective representation.  No employer, legislature, governor or judge can direct a real lawyer to do less.

Regardless of what how the funding is cut, or the numbers of defendants stack up like dead wood in the well, the responsibility of a real lawyer doesn’t change.  You may be pushed to the limit, pushed to a place farther away than you ever thought possible, but the decision of when you have reached your limit is yours, and yours alone.

Don’t delude yourself with romantic notions of martyrdom.  No matter how many poor miscreants’ files are dumped on your desk, no matter how needy their cause and how much you really want to help even if they call you offensive names and want nothing more than rid themselves of your services, you remain a real lawyer.  You have to make the choice that a real lawyer must make.  You have to decide where the line is drawn when you can no longer take another case, when you cannot provide effective representation.

It will anger your boss.  She’s been told to put lawyers on files, and that’s what she intends to do.  You’re the employee, and she expects you to do as you’re told.  The judge won’t be particularly sympathetic, by the way.

None of this matter, unfortunately.  It doesn’t matter that your boss has given you a direct order to take that 501st case.  It doesn’t matter that the judge refuses to acknowledge that you can’t go to trial (or cop a quick plea) with a defendant you’ve never met on a case you’ve never worked.  Practice your smile and shrug, as it will come in very handy.

There will be some who scorn you for your failure to fulfill society’s promise of providing an effective defense to the indigent.  By your refusal, you are personally responsible for failing to defend.  Nonsense.  The duty is societal, not personal. 

So what would a good lawyer, do?  And contrary to the commenters at the WSJ post, you are real lawyers.  Whether you are good lawyers is up to you.  There comes a point where your acceptance of another client exceeds your duty as a lawyer.

If it happens that the system is incapable of providing a lawyer for the defense of an indigent accused of a crime, let the system bear its weight.  Should it collapse under that weight, bummer.  Should it railroad unrepresented defendants, call it out.  But real lawyers have obligations to provide effective representation, and that duty doesn’t diminish because your employer tosses files on your desk.  Of course it will be painful, but if you can’t handle the pain, you’re in the wrong field.

TSA Offers Sophie A Choice

While heads were  spinning in outrage that an employee of the government of the United States of America was charged with the duty of rubbing her hands over the body of a six year old girl, we may have missed the point.  From the Washington Post :

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a leading critic of the agency’s passenger screening policies, called the incident “another example of mistreatment of an innocent American at the hands of TSA.”

TSA spokesman Nick Kimball offers the carrot and the stick:
Last fall, agency officials began reviewing whether to move beyond TSA’s current “one-size fits all” passenger screening system, “while maintaining a high level of security,” he said in an e-mail.


Part of the review includes finding ways to “improve the screening experience for low-risk populations, such as younger passengers,” Kimball said. Significant changes could be announced this year, he said.


Pistole has said he is considering the concept of a “trusted traveler” program, which would speed passengers through airport security checkpoints who are willing to provide detailed personal information in advance.


It seems in my outrage that I forgot all about the “trusted traveler” program.  That’s the funny thing about being outraged, it clouds the mind and impairs the thought processes necessary to fully analyze a situation. 

It doesn’t mean that the theater of the absurd created by the touching of this child was deliberate, part of a carefully crafted scheme to generate sufficient outrage that people would become more willing, more pliable, to accept a choice that gives the government something it’s always wanted from the public, unfettered access to a private information with our blessing.

It seems that there will be three choices offered people who take issue with the TSA’s inappropriate touching of people, young or old.  The first is a choice they expect few to consider rational, to forego flying.  We’re not a nation inclined toward self-sacrifice these days, and getting somewhere by stagecoach fails to satisfy our need for immediate gratification. 

So given the sense of need for protection from the terrorists, carefully nurtured for a decade and part of our national psyche, the TSA has raised the threat level to its max.  When our mothers, our daughters, our infirm and ourselves, reach the point where the confluence of fear and disgust can no longer be tolerated, there will be a relief valve, and third choice, an option where no uniformed person will touch our genitalia, our children’s genitalia.  And still we will be safe.

Consider the thought that went into the name, trusted traveler.  Trust.  Isn’t trust a wonderful thing, the characteristic that we all strive to achieve in ourselves and seek out in others?  Trust is good, so much better than molesting a child.

And the TSA won’t be offering Sophie any other choices.

I’m Your Wicked Uncle Sam

By now, I would expect anyone inclined to spend any time in the blawgosphere to be fully familiar with  the video of the TSA enhanced pat down of a six year old girl.  A few thoughts on what happened.

1.  No reasonable person can watch this without thinking it’s absurd.
2.  The touching of this six year old girl by any person not in uniform would have resulted in prosecution.
3.  The message to children that strangers and adults are not to touch their “private parts” is dead.
4.  The TSA is not only untroubled by this video, but asserts that this was a proper exercise of authority and standard operating procedure.
5.  In response to this video going viral, Blogger Bob at the TSA Blog posted about puppies.
6.  Had I been the parent of this child, chances are exceptionally good that I would be in custody.

Kevin Underhill, whose posts are about the humor to be found in the law, is no longer laughing. He writes:

In any other context, if you saw a stranger doing that to a six-year-old girl, wouldn’t you kick that person’s ass? Wouldn’t you at least try? Even at some risk to yourself? I bet you would. So why do we walk by when the government does it? Have we really become such cowards that we are willing to put up with six-year-old girls being groped because we think otherwise we can’t be 99.999% safe?

We are cowards to allow anyone to touch a six year old girl this way.  We are a nation of cowards.  Our government has authorized people to inappropriately touch little girls and we stand there and allow it.  It’s acceptable because our government tells us it’s “standard operating procedure.”  Our government has made molesting little girls its official policy, and we are docile and watch as it happens, afraid to scream “enough.”

We are the home of neither the free nor the brave.  We are cowards.