Last week, we posted a highly unusual motion from Arizona. Attorney Tajudeen “Taj” Oladiran filed a “Motion for a [sic] Honest and Honorable Court System” in his racketeering case against Suntrust Bank before the “dishonorable” Susan Bolton.

Taj was extremely disappointed in a ruling by Judge Bolton, calling her “a brainless coward.” He ended the motion with the following:

[M]any good lawyers in town told me the bank’s executives would never be deposed, and that the case would go nowhere. I stupidly stuck to the notion that everyone is equal under the law etc. Boy was I wrong…

My thanks go out to Larry Folks and Kathleen Weber [Ed. Note: opposing counsel] who both warned me that I would lose (I should have listened to them).

I apologize to all my clients. I know, I’m sorry does not repair the mess I made but, that’s all I’ve got.

To my family, words can’t express my apologies; please remember me kindly.

Finally, to Susan Bolton, we shall meet again you know where. :-)

Some readers of last week’s post worried that was a suicidal sign-off.

We got worried too when Taj failed to respond to our emails and phone calls of the past few days. Today, we sent him a Facebook message. When our phone rang with a strange number this afternoon, and the voice on the other end had a Nigerian accent, we were relieved.

Taj lives! He sent us a lengthy missive. Here’s an excerpt:

I hope my explanation will stop the jealous haters that sent me nasty comments from holding their breaths in anticipation of news that I’ve committed suicide. Sorry, no such plans. The Whistleblower Pleading is not about a suicidal lawyer, it is about how an out-of-state bank that made bad mortgage loans in Arizona was able to obtain a horribly biased ruling in its favor. An occurrence that I thought was impossible in the federal district court. .

Full statement, after the jump.

Tajudeen Oladiran is an Arizona attorney who is currently of counsel at Aguilera International Counsel. A Biglaw refugee, he spent a year at Greenberg Traurig, as well as a year working for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

Given those credentials, we were surprised that he would file one of the craziest motions we’ve come across here at Above The Law.

From the U.S. District Court of Arizona:

It is a motion in a case that Tajudeen Oladiran and his wife filed against Suntrust Bank for racketeering. We gather from the motion that Oladiran was not pleased with the ruling by “the Dishonorable Susan R. Bolton” (as she’s identified in the caption). Oladiran wrote: “I just read your Order and I am very disappointed in the fact that a brainless coward like you is a federal judge.”

A lesson on how not to address the court, after the jump.

There has been quite a bit of coverage on how the recession is affecting the august Harvard University. For example, the undergraduates aren’t getting hot breakfast anymore.

Meanwhile, over at Harvard Law School, things have gotten so bad that HLS is looking to sell off some naming rights to wealthy donors. Tax Prof Blog reports:

The following list provides a representative sample of named gift opportunities. In addition, several naming opportunities exist in the Law School’s Northwest Corner building project currently under construction.

* $25,000,000: International Graduate Student Fellowship Program, The Low Income Protection Plan Program
* $10,000,000: The Harvard Law Library Reading Room, Research Program (Academic/Clinical)
* $5,000,000: Combined Professorship and Research Fund
* $4,000,000: Professorship
* $2,000,000: Visiting Professorship
* $1,000,000: Research Fund
* $250,000: Scholarship/Fellowship Fund
* $100,000: Financial Aid Fund
* $10,000: Revolving Loan Fund

Remember, Harvard is only called “Harvard” because John Harvard had a nice library.

Maybe graduates of Harvard Business School can still afford to make lavish $25,000,000 gifts; alas, graduates of Harvard Law School probably don’t have that kind of flow anymore. But why should they be iced out of the naming game?

After the jump, let me suggest some low-cost naming rights that HLS could sell.

We have some interesting statistics that suggest legal sounding majors — like Prelaw or Criminal Justice — have a negative relationship with LSAT performance.

Courtesy of Tax Prof Blog, Professor Michael Nieswiadomy of North Texas, has given us average LSAT scores broken down by 29 differed undergraduate majors.

The bottom of the list is very interesting:

25. Education: LSAT = 149.4
26. Business Administration: LSAT = 149.1
27. Health Professions: LSAT = 148.4
28. Prelaw: LSAT = 148.3
29. Criminal Justice: LSAT = 146

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. But is there something going on in criminal justice classes that makes people unable to complete a logic game?

After the jump, let’s look at what you should major in if you want to do well on the LSAT.

* The U.N. is sovereign territory, so Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi can stay there if they want him to. But Englewood, New Jersey is squarely within the jurisdiction of the United States government. [New York Times]

* Chicago’s local government is apparently doing its part to keep the struggling Chicago legal market afloat. [Am Law Daily]

* Something you learned in Public International Law is actually being used in the real world. Foreign litigants are suing US corporations in US court under the Alien Torts Statute. [Wall Street Journal]

* President Obama has paid Perkins Coie over $1 million in fees to suppress “birther” litigation. Now, how about suppressing the birther movement altogether? [Legal Blog Watch]

* Last week, it was a Special Assistant AG eliminating witnesses. This week, a NY Supreme Court Justice is convicted of soliciting bribes from attorneys appearing before him. It’s a hell of a town. [Law.com]

* Former Gitmo detainee to sue US government for compensation. Surely there’s room here for some Class Action action. [The Times Online]

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that convicted criminals do not have a constitutional right to possibly exculpatory DNA evidence. The Court decided District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne by a 5 - 4 margin. SCOTUSblog reports Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion:

The task of writing rules to control access to DNA evidence “belongs primarily” to the legislature, the Chief Justice wrote. Pursuing a “freestanding and far-reaching constitutional right of access” to DNA evidence through a civil rights lawsuit, Roberts wrote, would “short-circuit” efforts now being made by the federal government and many states to develop tools on access to such evidence. “There is no reason to constitutionalize” access through the courts when elected officials are making “a prompt and considered” response to the DNA phenomenon, the opinion concluded.

Anthony Zuiker is going to be pissed off. CSI: Rikers Island is going to have to go back to the drawing board.

The dissent after the jump.

A replacement for Elena Kagan as dean of Harvard Law School has been named. It’s the well-liked law school professor Martha Minow.

Harvard University President Drew Faust announced the news to HLS students, today:

I am delighted to let you know that Martha Minow has agreed to serve as the next Dean of Harvard Law School. She will take up her duties on July 1.

Martha has been a member of the HLS faculty since 1981, and she has served the school with extraordinary dedication and energy. She is an eminent scholar of uncommon range and imagination, a greatly admired teacher who guided the school’s recent curricular review, and an outstanding citizen not only of the Law School but of the University, with impressive experience in academic leadership roles. She has a clear-eyed view of the challenges and opportunities facing the Law School, and a talent for bringing people together to work through important academic and institutional issues. Most of all, she has a passion for the law and for all that legal scholarship, education, and practice can do to advance the public good. I look forward to welcoming Martha to the University’s Council of Deans and to working closely with her in the years to come.

Faust also thanked interim Dean Howell Jackson for his service over the past few months.

More on Minow after the jump.

Berkeley Law School professor — and former Department of Justice attorney — John Yoo published his inaugural column in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday. He argues that Obama should nominate somebody FDR would have liked:

Franklin Roosevelt faced exactly this dilemma. With large majorities at his back, FDR pushed through sweeping legislative efforts to end the Great Depression (which never really worked). His only obstacle became the Supreme Court, which held several basic New Deal laws to violate the Constitution’s limits on federal powers and the economic rights of the individual. Only after FDR waged a campaign to increase the size of the court and give himself more appointments did the justices surrender. The New Deal could not have survived without judges that deferred to the legislature on economic regulation.

Obama could make a pick based solely on race or sex - though it’s not clear why the most empathetic judges are minorities or women - to please parts of his coalition. But if the president wants to secure the success of his economic, political, and national-security objectives, he should remember FDR’s example and choose a judge who believes in the right of the president and Congress, not the courts, to make the nation’s policies. If Obama shoots for empathy instead, he will give Senate Republicans yet another opportunity to rally around a unifying issue where they better represent the majority of Americans.

Wait, so now FDR’s court packing scheme was a good idea? Because it hobbled SCOTUS and forced them to defer to Roosevelt’s amazing enhancement of federal power? A conservative believes this?

Before we get too bogged down in Yoo’s argument, can somebody remind me why we care about what John Yoo has to say?

The left (over) reacts after the jump.

Stanford Law School just issued a press release announcing that Judge Michael McConnell of the 10th Circuit will be joining the school’s faculty in the fall. McConnell hails from Utah and was on Bush’s Supremes short list in 2005. From the press release:

McConnell will step down from his role on the bench to rejoin the legal academy and direct the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

McConnell is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top judges and most distinguished constitutional law scholars. He has written broadly on many aspects of the Constitution but is best known for his work on freedom of religion—a critical area of constitutional law that he effectively redefined before ascending the bench. McConnell was appointed to the Denver-based Tenth Circuit in 2002 by President George W. Bush.

This is great news for Stanford, but surprising news from McConnell, who had already lined up his clerks for 2009-2010. McConnell is a highly-regarded judge who is reputed to be great to work for and has been known to feed clerks to SCOTUS in the past. This must come as a big disappointment for the four clerks who had been slated to work with him. David Tighe, the 10th Circuit’s spokesman, says he’s unsure of the would-have-been clerks’ plans. Well, it’s easy to get a job nowadays, right?

In a press release [PDF] from the 10th Circuit, McConnell says:

“The opportunity to serve on the Tenth Circuit has been a great privilege and one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I will especially miss working with my colleagues on the court, whose friendship, collegiality, and commitment to upholding law and justice are a model and an inspiration. But my first love remains in teaching and scholarship. Especially at this time of grave international and domestic challenges and transformation, I want to contribute more openly to debate, scholarly analysis, and public understanding of the governing principles of the American Republic.”

Unsaid is that a Stanford salary trumps that from the 10th Circuit. And that McConnell’s SCOTUS dreams died along with Obama’s winning the election.

After the jump, we’ve got McConnell’s resignation letter to President Obama.

* Notes from the Breadline continues to spark discussion around the nation. Now if it would only spark a job offer. [My Shingle]

* NYU was the first law school in the country to hold a career fair for its deferred associates and furloughed alumni. Kash is working on a story about this and would love to hear how the fair went. Supposedly, 300 3Ls were in attendance. Could a few of you email Kash at kashmir@abovethelaw.com? She promises to be nice. [NYU Law School]

* Super couple Samatha Power and Cass Sunstein had a baby. His name is Declan Power-Sunstein. But we can probably start calling him “International Overlord” right now, just to get on his good side. [Reliable Source / Washington Post]

* If it’s not good enough for your freshman history class, it’s not good enough for a court of law. [NorthJersey.com]

* A civil libertarian’s quest for inner harmony. [Underdog]

* Punishment has been handed down to an overly litigious Stanford Law graduate. [Overlawyered]

* I don’t understand digital rights management, but I’m sure there are legal fees available for somebody that does. [Intellectual Property Colloquium]

* Britney Spears is not mentally fit to testify in court. If you are surprised by this ruling, you are not mentally fit to testify in court. [Popsquire]

Some of our DC-based readers may have spotted this DLA Piper hate ad making its way around town via taxi. An ATL reader sent us this photo, saying:

I saw this cab on Connecticut Ave. in front of the Mayflower yesterday and it caught my attention. Strange.

Our first response was, “Bad PR for DLA Piper, but doesn’t everybody already know that blood money is the currency of Biglaw?” Our second response was to find out about this legislation and reach out to the firm.

The American Lawyer wrote in 2008 about the Piper’s playing the flute for the Ethiopian government. Partners Dick Armey, a former House majority leader, and Gary Klein lobbied on Capitol Hill on behalf of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who angered human rights advocates in 2005 with violent crackdowns on protesters during the elections there. The American Lawyer reports that the Piper was playing to the tune of over $50,000 a month. That’s a whole lot of injera.

The taxi ad refers to a bill introduced by Senators Feingold and Leahy “to reaffirm United States objectives in Ethiopia and encourage critical democratic and humanitarian principles and practices.” Or. in other words, a bill to encourage Ethiopia not to inflict violent crackdowns on its citizens. DLA Piper’s lobbying efforts may have paid off. The bill has been languishing with the Committee on Foreign Relations since 2008.

DLA Piper’s spokesman told us that the firm’s representation of the Ethiopian government actually ended in November. A statement from the firm refers indirectly to the protesting taxi driver (and other DLA Piper haters): “There are some very vocal elements of the Ethiopian Diaspora, particularly in the Washington area, who are opponents of the current administration in Ethiopia and go to great lengths to try to embarrass or demean those who are associated with it.”

See the full statement, after the jump. DLA Piper may no longer have Ethiopia as a client, but the firm is actively helping to churn out new lawyers over in Addis Ababa.

As we predicted last month, Harold Hongju Koh is stepping down from the deanship at Yale Law School. President Obama is nominating Dean Koh to serve as the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. Dean Koh previously served in the State Department, as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, from 1998 to 2001.

Dean Koh is relinquishing his day-to-day deanly duties immediately, to prepare for his upcoming confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If confirmed, he will officially resign as dean, after five years of service. Professor Kate Stith is taking over as Acting Dean of Yale Law School.

When we visited our alma mater back in December, Dean Koh was most gracious and welcoming (even though he has occasionally been on the receiving side of snark here at ATL). We wish Dean Koh well in his new position.

Memos after the jump.

The world is obsessed with celebrity professors Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, who recently left the ivory tower to take high-ranking positions in the Obama Administration. He might someday sit on the Supreme Court; she’s a winner of the Pulitzer Prize; and together, as we previously reported (see the update), they’re creating the World’s Smartest Baby.

How many HLS grads turned Harvard professors get named Fun Couple of the 21st Century by Esquire? The article begins:

If The Chronicle of Higher Education had paparazzi, a few of them would be camped outside this office right now.

The office is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and inside are two Harvard professors. The first — a tall woman in her thirties with long red hair — is wrapped in a wool blanket…. The second — a slightly older man who looks a bit like William Hurt — wears a dark suit and is twirling a Wilson tennis racket, a favorite habit of his. They’re talking about the usual — Obama, the fight against extremism, the future of the Supreme Court. And also, who should order flowers for the priest who helped them out with wedding plans.

In a week, they’re getting married in a small church in Ireland — a fact that, if those paparazzi did exist, would send them into a Brad-and-Angelina tizzy.

Oh, but such paparazzi do exist. Harvard Law School student “Percy Thrillington” snapped a few photos of the happy couple, in an HLS parking lot — the small parking lot just off Mass. Ave., next to the International Legal Studies library. They were unloading what said tipster described as “a rather dorky-looking red PT Cruiser.”

(Hey, Percy, lay off the PT Cruiser. If it’s good enough for Chief Justice John Roberts — see photo at right — then it’s good enough for Cass and Sam.)

After a heated bidding war between top tabloid publications — bids climbed well into the six figures, allowing Percy to pay for his law school education — ATL emerged victorious. We now proudly present exclusive photographs of the world’s leading legal-academic couple.

Check out paparazzi pics of the Power couple, after the jump.

Yes We Can…. Hire lots and lots of Supreme Court clerks?

In prior posts (here and here), we reported on the impressive legal team that President Barack Obama has assembled to staff key positions in his administration. Like many of the Bush Administration lawyers they’re replacing, the Obama lawyers have impressive pedigrees: degrees from top law schools, often with honors and/or law review experience; impressive clerkships, including many SCOTUS clerkships; and stints at leading law firms (but with WilmerHale and Williams & Connolly replacing Gibson Dunn and Kirkland & Ellis as the feeder firms).

Several legal superstars are making big financial sacrifices to go into government service. They can expect low six-figure salaries as government lawyers, a far cry from the seven figures that some of them — not the law professors, but the Biglaw partners — earned in the private sector. As reported by Ken Vogel over at Politico:

Eric Holder, President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, will get a separation payment from his firm, Covington & Burling, of between $1 million and $5 million, plus a share of the firm’s profits from this year “based on work performed through date of separation,” and a repayment of between $500,000 and $1 million from the firm’s capital account…. [Holder] earned $3.3 million last year as partner.

Jeh Johnson, Obama’s nominee to be the Pentagon’s top lawyer, would get a severance of between $1 million and $5 million from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, an international law firm. He’ll also get his $200,000 capital investment back from the firm, which paid him $2.6 million last year as a partner.

For more details — e.g., how much Eric Holder and Jeh Johnson’s retirement plans and pensions might be worth — see Politico.

In our earlier hiring round-ups, we missed a few names. Many tipsters came forward to fill in the blanks.

Learn about the latest legal eagles to land in the Obama nest, after the jump.

* Enjoy the inauguration. Even if work sucks—America is awesome. There is a lot of news concerning the inauguration, but one interesting point is that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is the “designated successor” to run the federal government in case of emergency and will not attend the inauguration. [The Washington Post]

* A federal judge granted Cheney discretion over which records of his actions as Vice President have to be preserved in the national archives. Good idea. Surely we can count on Dick Cheney not to destroy any documents that make him look bad. Especially since he has been so truthful and transparent in the past. [The Washington Post]

* Former public defender Randy Koshnick’s representation of cop-killer Ted Oswald could hurt him in his bid for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. [The Chicago Tribune]

* Frequent ATL readers are probably sick of reading about Guantanamo. But the war crimes court at the prison convened yesterday, and proceedings were disrupted by the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9-11. [Reuters]

* The International Court of Justice ruled that the U.S. violated a previous order when Texas executed a Mexican national guilty of rape and murder. [The Los Angeles Times]

* The 213 families in China whose babies got sick from drinking tainted milk brought the case to Chinese Supreme Court. [The Associated Press]

* Chicago lawyer Anton Valukas is in charge of investigating Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy. [Bloomberg.com]

The MacArthur Foundation is known for its genius grants— a.k.a. “Out of the blue—$500,000— no strings attached”— that are given to 20 to 40 individuals each year in recognition of incredible creativity and originality.

Last year, the Foundation started giving out a new award: the international justice award for individuals and organizations that have “been transformative forces in the fields of human rights and international justice.” Diplomat, economist and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was the inaugural recipient. Great guy and all, but not an attorney.

We’re happy to report that an actual lawyer has received the award this year. Congratulations to Justice Richard Goldstone, of South Africa. He gets $100,000 and can recommend non-profit recipients for an additional $500,000.

The MacArthur Foundation’s announcement says Goldstone has received the award for his work as chief prosecutor of the tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, “the first of their kind since Nazi war criminals were tried at Nuremberg following World War II.” He focused on prosecuting top political and military perpetrators and filed genocide and crimes against humanity charges against Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic in 1995.

“Since the early 1990s, we have witnessed the emergence of a system of international justice that is growing stronger with each new case tried in a regional court or UN tribunal and with each investigation opened by the International Criminal Court. It has given me tremendous pride and satisfaction to have played a role in ensuring that the perpetrators of mass atrocities have more reason today than ever to fear being brought to justice,” said Goldstone.

Goldstone is no stranger to the U.S. He has taught international law at Harvard, NYU, and Fordham.

See, international law is not completely worthless. It may be worth less than a year in Biglaw, but still…

Justice Richard Goldstone to Receive MacArthur Award for International Justice [MacArthur Foundation Press Release]

While everyone spent the weekend talking about who bested whom in the McCain-Obama match-up, the New York Times magazine turned away from all that to focus on the really important policy makers in Washington: the Supreme Court. SCOTUS played cover model for Sunday’s NYT magazine, with HLS prof Noah Feldman’s lengthy piece, When Judges Make Foreign Policy.

We love the Star Wars-esque article preview: “When the next justice is appointed, our place in the world may well hang in the balance.” In case you didn’t get the magazine this weekend, and don’t feel like clicking through ten pages online to read it, we’ve got a rundown for you.

Feldman writes that the justices have become “the oracles of our national identity.” We like this analogy. The Greek oracles wore white. The Justices wear black. Advice seekers went to temples to consult Greek oracles. People go to the white gleaming temple at One First Street to address the Justices. The Greeks had hallucinogenic fumes rising from the earth, enhancing their prophetic powers. The Justices have caffeine and the sweet, sweet smell of the pages of the Constitution. But we digress.

Feldman says the defining issue of our time is globalization, and that SCOTUS wields incredible power as it establishes the place of the U.S. in the world through its rulings on international law. Listen up, law school folk, perhaps that international law class is not such a waste of time after all. Conservatives and liberals feel differently, of course, about how the Constitution applies internationally:

In recent years, two prominent schools of thought have emerged… One view, closely associated with the Bush administration, begins with the observation that law, in the age of modern liberal democracy, derives its legitimacy from being enacted by elected representatives of the people. From this standpoint, the Constitution is seen as facing inward, toward the Americans who made it, toward their rights and their security. For the most part, that is, the rights the Constitution provides are for citizens and provided only within the borders of the country…

A competing view, championed mostly by liberals, defines the rule of law differently: law is conceived not as a quintessentially national phenomenon but rather as a global ideal. The liberal position readily concedes that the Constitution specifies the law for the United States but stresses that a fuller, more complete conception of law demands that American law be pictured alongside international law and other (legitimate) national constitutions.

Feldman argues that new appointees for SCOTUS spots that are sure to open should be evaluated based on their thinking about the Court’s role in shaping American foreign policy. The SCOTUS newbies will determine whether the Constitution will be a shield, or will be a blanket shared around the global campfire while everyone sings Kumbaya.

More on this after the jump.

New York judge Ronald Tills is the guy you want in charge of your bachelor party. You might think he’s out of touch at 73 years old, but he still knows where to find the ladies. Unfortunately, they’re the kind you have to pay for.

Tills pleaded guilty last week to violating the Mann Act by bringing a prostitute across a state line. Among his other prostitute-related offenses, as reported by the Buffalo News:

He was responsible for recruiting out-of-state prostitutes to work a Jesters meeting in Dunkirk “in or about September 2001,” while serving as director of the Buffalo chapter of the Jesters.

He recruited an illegal alien prostitute from a North Tonawanda massage parlor to service men at a Jesters event in Kentucky in October 2005.

He arranged for transporting prostitutes from Buffalo Niagara International Airport to a national Jesters meeting in Niagara Falls, Ont., in the spring of 2006.

A retired acting New York Supreme Court justice and Court of Claims judge, Tills must have been known as the “Grand Poobah of Prostitute Procurement” to the Royal Order of Jesters.

According to the Jesters website, it’s a Masonic organization descended from the Shriners, but it’s not into charity like most Masonic groups. It has “a fun ‘degree’, with absolutely no serious intent.” Just the serious intent to get busy with prostitutes.

Former judge Tills faces likely prison term after admitting he recruited prostitutes [Buffalo News]
Former Judge Pleads Guilty to Transporting Prostitute Across State Lines [New York Law Journal]
Surely You Jest: Former New York Judge Admits to Violating Mann Act [WSJ Law Blog]

* Obama and McCain name their least favorite Supreme Court justices. McCain hates four of them; Obama focused his hatin’ on just one. [Legal Times]

* The legal battle over the 2008 presidency gets started in Ohio. “The Ohio Republican Party yesterday threatened legal action if Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner allows Ohioans to simultaneously register to vote and cast absentee ballots…” [Toledo Blade]

* Senators want to delay new rules for FBI national security investigations, because everyone’s a little bit racist. [Associated Press]

* Princeton Review joins the ranks of companies that have exposed customers’ personal information. The test scores and personal data of thousands of Virginia and Florida students were inadvertently made accessible online for weeks. [New York Times]

* Self-described “antifeminist” lawyer goes after Columbia University’s department of women’s studies. [City Room / New York Times via Jezebel]

* Our favorite American-themed international headline of the day: “US lesbian wins fertility battle.” [BBC News]

[Ed. note: Apologies for this late posting. We’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties this morning.]

* Texas executed a Mexican citizen yesterday after SCOTUS denied a last minute request for a reprieve. Neither the International Court of Justice nor the Bush administration is pleased. [New York Times]

* Ninth Circuit to review an e-mail hacking case that could redefine online privacy. [Washington Post]

* Reputed mobster John Gotti indicted … again. This time in Tampa. Maybe Florida prosecutors will fare better than New York ones have. [New York Times]

* Justice Department prepares to declare anthrax case closed. [New York Times]

* Biggest identity theft ring ever exposed. Federal prosecutors charge 11 people from five different countries with stealing 41 million credit card numbers. [International Herald Tribune]

* California man convicted of murdering his lawyer when case went badly. [San Jose Mercury News]

* Not really law-related, but definitely amusing. Paris Hilton responds to McCain’s ad: Paris for President? [Funny or Die]