* ATL Stock Tip of the Day: Start shorting Pottery Barn. [How Appealing (linkwrap)]**

* A hot new trend among federal judges out west (even more popular than Bikram yoga): Benchslapping the Bush Administration over its environmental policies. [Washington Post]

* Joan Biskupic is a distinguished Supreme Court reporter; but this article is très USA Today. In tomorrow's paper: "Justices Explain Their Views By Issuing Opinions." [USA Today]

* Judge Jeremy Fogel (N.D. Cal.) thinks about tinkering with the machinery of death. [Los Angeles Times]

* Heh. Harvard Law School revises its first-year curriculum, in what sounds like a Yale-ish direction: less emphasis on all that boring "One L" crap -- contracts, torts, property, procedure -- and more emphasis on sexy stuff like "policy" and "international law." Not far behind: Law and Basket-Weaving. [Harvard Crimson via How Appealing]

* If Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz has his way, the SEC's corporate disclosure rules would be amended to allow him to disseminate company news via his personal blog. Who says blogs are nothing but political grandstanding or snarky commentary? Sometimes you can actually learn stuff from 'em. [WSJ Law Blog]

** Pottery Barn is actually a subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma (NYSE ticker: WSM).

And no, it's not instant messenger. It's this thing called blogging...

Sun Microsystems General Counsel Mike Dillon has started a blog (the blandly named "Legal Thing"). According to the WSJ Law Blog, it's the first blog launched by a Fortune 500 GC. Dillon explains why he's blogging in these terms:

My primary motivation is a question that I am frequently asked. It comes in two forms. From others in my profession, it is articulated as: "What is it like being the General Counsel of a Fortune 500 company like Sun Microsystems?" From my children it is posed as: "Daddy, what do you DO at work all day?"

We don't know anything specific about Dillon. But if he's like general counsels at most big corporations, the answer is pretty simple: "I hire outside counsel to do everything for me, including wiping my ass. Then I bitch to them about the bill. And then I collect my grossly inflated paycheck, before leaving the office to get in a round of golf in before dinner."

This Should Be Interesting [The Legal Thing]