I always wondered where former FEMA director Michael Brown would end up. I imagined he would end up as a greeter at the Bush presidential library. You know, something that he is actually qualified to do.
Instead, it appears the overmatched bureaucrat is taking his show to law school. No, not as a student, as a professor. TPMMuckraker reports:
Michael Brown, the much-ridiculed former FEMA director who became a symbol of the Bush administration’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, has landed a new gig: teaching a law-school class on the Patriot Act next spring.
What student body will be lucky enough to learn from the best? Details after the jump.
A couple’s ill-concealed sexual play aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles got them charged with violating the Patriot Act, intended for terrorist acts, and could land them in jail for 20 years.
First, a correction. The couple wasn’t charged with violating the Patriot Act, but with violating 49 U.S.C.A. § 46504. As Professor Orin Kerr explains, this provision was amended by the Patriot Act, but “the substantive offense that was charged dates back to the 1960s.”
Second, an update. The couple may have needed air sickness bags rather than a hotel room. From a later AP piece:
A man arrested for allegedly engaging in “overt sexual activity” with his girlfriend on an airliner was lying with his head on her lap because he wasn’t feeling well, his attorney said.
That gesture was misinterpreted by a flight attendant, who humiliated and harassed the couple, said attorney Deb Newton, who represents Carl Persing.
Jeez, the terrorists really HAVE won. They’ve sucked all the fun out of flying:
A couple’s ill-concealed sexual play aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles got them charged with violating the Patriot Act, intended for terrorist acts, and could land them in jail for 20 years.
According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, “making other passengers uncomfortable,” when a flight attendant asked them to stop.
“Persing was observed nuzzling or kissing Sewell on the neck, and … with his face pressed against Sewell’s vaginal area. During these actions, Sewell was observed smiling,” reads the indictment filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Help us out here. How does “pressing one’s face” against the “vaginal area” of a fellow passenger violate the Patriot Act? Especially if that passenger is “observed smiling”?
On a second warning from the flight attendant, Persing snapped back threatening the flight attendant with “serious consequences” if he did not leave them alone.
The comment was enough to have the couple, both in their early 40s, arrested when the plane reached its destination in Raleigh, North Carolina, and charged with obstructing a flight attendant and with criminal association.
Okay, that makes more sense. Press all you want into the “vaginal areas” of your fellow passengers (provided, of course, that you know them and they consent). Just don’t threaten the stewardess flight attendant when ordered to stop, and you’ll be fine. Update: Professor Orin Kerr has some doubts about this case. See here. Further Update, and Correction: They weren’t charged under the Patriot Act, but under 49 U.S.C.A. § 46504. See Professor Kerr’s update. Serves us right for not looking at the indictment ourselves. Mid-flight Sexual Play Lands US Couple Afoul of Anti-Terrorism Law [Associated Press]
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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I always wondered where former FEMA director Michael Brown would end up. I imagined he would end up as a greeter at the Bush presidential library. You know, something that he is actually qualified to do.
