Ben Wittes

* The Village Voice is stepping away from Backpage due to its ties to sex trafficking. “This so unfair! Everyone loves online prostitution!,” said no one ever (okay fine, a lot of people probably say that). [paidContent] * Cybersecurity, drones, and smackdowns, oh my! [Lawfare] * Right now, millions of taxpayer dollars fund legal scholarship. Considering how expensive law review articles seem to be, it’d be nice if law professors could techcite their own material before turning it over to law review peons associate staff members for further review. [PrawfsBlawg] * We actually needed 25 volumes of things you can’t do on a plane? Apparently common sense is a relic these days. [Legal Blog Watch] * Should you go to law school? That’s apparently the question on everyone’s mind, so Professor Deborah Merritt of Ohio State Law and Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency are here to help you out. [NerdWallet] * Wherein the five worst law partners known are discussed. Oh, whatever, partners should be able to act however they want to anyone. [Greedy Associates / FindLaw]

When you stop smoking, the cigarettes don’t get together to figure out how to kill you anyway. — Benjamin Wittes, on a panel at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, responding to the observation that smoking and traffic accidents cause more deaths in a year than 9/11. (Julian Sanchez discusses what the web […]

We spent a fair amount of time last week in lovely Charlottesville, Virginia, where we spoke at the University of Virginia Law School (coverage of our talk appears here and here). We spent lots of quality time with UVA Law students — at dinner, at a karaoke bar, and walking around the beautiful grounds. One […]

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may be slightly more secure in his position these days than in the recent past, when it was looking like “Gonzales” was Spanish for “canned.” But he’s not out of the woods yet — which is why speculation about possible successors continues. Ben Wittes, writing for TNR Online, has some excellent […]

Here are some recent, noteworthy moves within the D.C. legal community: Inside the Administration: * Conservative legal superstar Jennifer Brosnahan has left the White House Counsel’s office, where she was one of the more senior associate counsels, to become the new deputy general counsel at the Department of Transportation. From government to private practice: * […]

Hey, guess what? In our best impression of Howard Bashman, we’re going to tell you all about a recent lunch of ours. On Tuesday, we had an absolutely delightful lunch with Benjamin Wittes. He’s an editorial writer for the Washington Post, specializing in legal affairs, and the author of a new book about the judicial […]