* Jose Padilla gets 17 years. [New York Times; Washington Post]

* A merger between Anderson Kill and Reed Smith? Maybe not. But 55 of Anderson Kill’s 126 lawyers have decamped for Reed Smith. [WSJ Law Blog; WSJ Law Blog]

* Ted Frank on yesterday's Enron cert denial: Extortion, interrupted? [New York Sun]

* China shuts down "real-time" porn site, as part of its crackdown on online porn. [Reuters]

* Law tie (however tenuous) to Heath Ledger story: "Nicole Vaughan, 24, a law student at New York University, was in a seminar about Jesus when someone sent her a message about Mr. Ledger. She checked the Web, then walked to the apartment 'because of the way our generation is; we sort of feel we’re a part of each other’s lives.'” [New York Times]

* Apparently Bill Clinton enjoys the Yale Law / Harvard Law rivalry: "I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight." [NYDN via Drudge]

* Does the Supreme Court's Stoneridge decision give the "getaway drivers" of securities fraud a free pass? [OverHedged]

* Apparently Green Bay fans really like the Packers. [SI.com]

* Miss Loyola 2L? Meet Kirsten Wolf. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Did Barack Obama receive an illegal endorsement? [TaxProf Blog]

* Speaking of Obama, his minister had this to say about Bill Clinton: "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky." Can someone please remove the cigar from the national vajayjay? [Baltimore Sun]

Ok, here's the final non-top-tier law graduate of the day:

Name: Leon Panetta

Law School: Santa Clara University

Current Position: Co-Director of The Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute of Public Policy, and frequent talking head

Why He's Our Winner: Former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton

And this winner reminds us of an honorable mention, which follows the jump.

Leon Panetta bio [Wikipedia]
The Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy

We met Chelsea Clinton at a wedding once. She wasn't super-friendly; in fact, she was downright standoffish. She gave off this aloof, "stay away starf**kers" sort of vibe.

Chilly Chelsea couldn't be more different from her gregarious parents, whom we've had the pleasure of meeting. Bill and Hillary Clinton are friendly and down-to-earth, despite being far more recognizable than even their famous daughter.

(Yeah, we know, they're politicians and she's an ordinary citizen. But that doesn't means she can't be nice to people.)

Based on our firsthand experience with Chelsea Clinton -- and it was an overseas wedding, so we were actually in her presence for several days -- we weren't that surprised to read this story. From WCBSTV:

A celebrity photo has led a former president to send a threatening letter to a Manhattan restaurant owner.

President Bill Clinton has demanded that the owner of Greenwich Village restaurant Osso Buco remove a picture of his daughter Chelsea that's been gracing the walls of the family-style Italian eatery, alongside other celebrity photographs.

Owner Nino Selimaj tells CBS 2 that the picture has been up for years and has never posed a problem until now.

What's the big deal? Such pictures are commonplace in restaurants of a certain type, and they're all over the place at Osso Buco -- placing Chelsea on notice, when she posed for the photo, that it might be hung on the wall.

More after the jump.

As we have previously bitterly lamented observed, sometimes it seems like all the blessings of life are reserved for Supreme Court clerks. And they include not just $250,000 signing bonuses and top-shelf legal jobs, but luxury real estate, too.

This latest Lawyerly Lairs post looks at the expanding digs of Joel I. Klein (Powell) and his wife, Nicole K. Seligman (OT 1984/Marshall). From the New York Observer:

New York is a city of poshly-housed public servants.

The mayor owns two mansions in the East 70’s; the governor goes rent-free in a terraced Fifth Avenue apartment (it’s owned by his dad); development chief Robert Lieber has a new $7.25 million condo at Trump International; and even Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum is in the Beresford.

Now Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has bonus space on Park Avenue. He and his wife Nicole Seligman, a Sony executive vice president (and an ex-lawyer for both Oliver North and Bill Clinton) have paid $1.7 million for their second apartment at 95-year-old 565 Park Avenue.

Yes, that's right -- their second apartment in this venerable building. The couple already own the unit directly above their new acquisition. Hello, duplex!

(C'mon, get real: Did you really expect Klein and Seligman to slum it in a sub-$2 million apartment? As people have observed countless times in these pages, $2 million doesn't buy you much in NYC.)

More details after the jump.

What's that you say? You're a major international political figure, and you're embroiled in a scandal that could cost your job? What should you do? Why, hire a rock star lawyer of course!

Paul Wolfowitz has done just that, hiring Robert Bennett to represent him in his fight to save his job as president of the World Bank. Bennett, who represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, is a partner at Skadden Arps.

From the New York Times:

Robert S. Bennett, the lawyer selected by Mr. Wolfowitz, said in an interview that before the bank’s board acted on charges of ethical lapses, he and Mr. Wolfowitz wanted more time to prepare a case showing that the bank president had acted properly on all matters that the board is investigating.

“I am very worried about the rush to judgment,” Mr. Bennett said. “We just had a wonderful example of that in the Duke lacrosse case. I have reviewed the essential documents, and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mr. Wolfowitz exercised good faith and that everything he did was in the best interests of the bank.”

Interesting that Wolfowitz would choose an attorney known for representing Clinton. Then again, the allegations do involve a female staffer, so maybe Bennett's experience with Clinton makes him the perfect choice.

Still, though, is there much Bennett can do for Wolfowitz? What exactly is Wolfowitz's recourse if the Bank fires him unfairly? Isn't Bennett basically being hired as a PR guy on this one? Which is not to say that attorneys acting as PR reps is anything new, but it usually takes place within the context of criminal or civil litigation.

Anyway, we're kind of rooting for the Wolfman. I mean, what's the point of a job like president of the World Bank if you can't give you preferential treatment to your girlfriend?

Forget about Biglaw, kids. If you want to make some serious dough, there are better ways. And we're not talking about i-banking, hedge funds, and venture capital.

If you want to make not just hundreds of thousands, but many millions, follow this easy, five-point plan:

1. Become governor of a small Southern state.
2. Become President of the United States.
3. Get fellated by an attractive young intern; get impeached.
4. Leave office.
5. Hit the lecture circuit; rake in $9 to $10 million a year in speaking fees.

Sure, step #3 isn't essential to the plan. But why would you want to skip it?

Update: If you, like this commenter, miss having Bill Clinton as president, we have a suggestion for you: VOTE FOR HILLARY!!!

Senator Hillary Clinton is proud of her husband's record while in office. And unlike Al Gore, she is embracing rather than distancing herself from that record -- which strikes us as a shrewd move.

For Clinton, New Wealth In Speeches: Fees in 6 Years Total Nearly $40 Million [Washington Post]

The big news of the weekend: the announcement by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that she's opening a presidential exploratory committee. This is, of course, the first step towards a (now inevitable) White House bid.

If you haven't done so already, check out Senator Clinton's videotaped announcement. It's excellent.

Senator Clinton's intelligence, work ethic, experience and toughness all lie beyond the dispute. But the video highlights her charm, conviviality, and sense of humor. Regardless of whether you're a Hillary fan or Hillary hater, we think you'll be impressed by the video.

It's very well-produced. The nice touches include the lovely side table, featuring pink roses and a discreet photo of her and Bill; Senator Clinton's deft invocation of her Midwestern roots, replete with a Midwestern accent (listen to how she says "part"); and, of course, her flawless make-up. She looks great even in extreme close-up -- which can't be said for most of us. Can you believe she's 59 years old?

There is a legal angle to this paean to Hillary (Yale Law School class of 1973). Discussion continues after the jump.

The Drudge Report headline blared, "Michigan Law: Adultery could lead to life in prison!" Fearing that Bill Clinton might be eligible for the death penalty -- he's been on our mind, since we rented Primary Colors yesterday -- we clicked through to the underlying article, from the Detroit Free Press.

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."

And then the Free Press got catty:

No one expects prosecutors to declare open season on cheating spouses. The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox.... In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.

The AG's office didn't take kindly to the snark:

Cox's spokesman, Rusty Hills, bristled at the suggestion that Cox or anyone else in his circumstances could face prosecution.

"To even ask about this borders on the nutty," Hills told me in a phone interview Saturday. "Nobody connects the attorney general with this -- N-O-B-O-D-Y -- and anybody who thinks otherwise is hallucinogenic."

Hills said Sunday that Cox did not want to comment.

Finally, this struck us as strange. When was the last time you heard of a sitting judge discussing an appellate panel's deliberations with a news outlet, concerning a case that's still pending in the courts? (The defendant is seeking leave to appeal from the Michigan Supreme Court.)

Chief Court of Appeals Judge William Whitbeck, who signed the opinion along with [Judge William] Murphy and Judge Michael Smolenski, said that Cox's confessed adultery never came up during their discussions of the case.

"I never thought of it, and I'm confident that it was not something Judge Murphy or Judge Smolenski had in mind," Whitbeck told me Friday.

But he chuckled uncomfortably when I asked if the hypothetical described in Murphy's opinion couldn't be cited as justification for bringing first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges against the attorney general.

"Well, yeah," he said.

Adultery could mean life, court finds [Detroit Free Press via Drudge Report]

America's SweeTart just graduated from the London School of Economics with an M.S. in Social Psychology. Interestingly enough, her LSE master's thesis was law-oriented: an examination of the effect of pretrial publicity on jury selection.

(Monica: Please don't treat that rolled-up diploma like a cigar. Thank you.)

Lewinsky graduates from London School of Economics [Reuters via Drudge Report]
In Search of the Impartial Juror: The third person effect and pretrial publicity [London School of Economics (Psychology Dept.)]
Nature of President Clinton's Relationship with Monica Lewinsky [Starr Report]
Now Here's an Oral Sex Scandal for You [Volokh Conspiracy]

* We're several days late on this; but it's just as well. We're not touching this controversy (see photo below) with the proverbial 10-foot pole. [Althouse; Feministing; Althouse; Feministing]

But just out of curiosity, ATL readers, what's your first reaction to this photo of Bill Clinton and a group of bloggers? Please place your responses in the comments to this post.

* HP looked into having spies infiltrate the offices of CNET and the Wall Street Journal by posing as clerical employees or cleaning crew members. This scandal gets more insane by the day. [DealBreaker]

* Have an iron stomach? Looking for a quick way to make $75,000? [TortsProf Blog]

* We agree with Professor Dimino's students -- we'll take a statutory class over Con Law any day of the week. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Lawyers don't have a monopoly on mumbo jumbo. [Securities Litigation Watch via DealBreaker]

* It's about time: Washington women get on the footwear bandwagon. [Washington Post]