Barack Obama

Morning Docket: 12.17.12

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* “To do nothing in the face of pending disaster is to be complicit. It’s time to act. It’s time to vote.” What a convenient time to discover that the Department of Justice tabled new gun control proposals in favor of an upcoming election campaign. [New York Times]

* Rumor has it that the president will nominate Senator John Kerry to be secretary of state for his second term. Upon hearing the news, Hillary Clinton updated her Tumblr page before she caught a case of the vapors, fainted, and got herself all concussed. [CNN]

* “If you don’t know, then you have to plan for the worst.” Everyone’s pissed off about the possibility of being pushed off the fiscal cliff, but on the bright side, it’s creating a mountain of billables. [National Law Journal]

* Remember the judge who resigned after he accidentally showed a colleague a picture of the “judicial penis”? He was removed from office by a judicial ethics panel. How very effective. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

* And for the talent portion of the competition, Alicia Guastaferro, the pageant princess who was picked up for prostitution after getting caught with an attorney, will have her hooking charges dropped. [Huffington Post]

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Solo Practitioner Sends Rejection Letter Blaming ‘Election Results’ For Hiring Freeze

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Elections have consequences, and right now I’m waiting for Republicans to start paying the piper. I’m looking at you, Ted Nugent. You declared, nay promised, that if Obama was reelected, you’d either be dead or in jail within a year. Well, tick tock buddy, we’re all waiting.

In fact, there were many Republicans who promised to do all sorts of horrible things should Barack Obama win. And apparently some of them are following through. Nothing makes a political statement about the vibrancy of our democracy than petulantly firing people when democracy doesn’t go your way.

And heck, we don’t even know how many people will be “not hired” because, “Grrr… we have to pay for our employees’ health care because we were too partisan or stupid to support a single-payer system that would have shifted the burden of health insurance away from private employers.”

At least, we won’t know unless they tell us. Which, incredibly, one solo practitioner apparently did, in a rejection letter to somebody who applied in response to her Craigslist ad. It’s easily the best post-election rejection letter we’ve seen….

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Morning Docket: 12.06.12

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Overworked and underpaid.

* “Why drag us into it?” Constitutional or not, it seems that not even the D.C. Circuit wants to deal with the political hot mess that’s been caused by President Barack Obama’s recess appointments. [National Law Journal]

* There’s something (allegedly) rotten in the state of Texas: Bickel & Brewer was booted from a multi-million dollar lawsuit due to accusations that the firm paid top dollar for insider information. [Dallas Morning News (sub. req.)]

* There are many more women in the legal profession these days than there were 40 years ago, but — surprise, surprise, here’s a shocker — they’re still getting paid less than their male counterparts. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* And here’s today’s opportunity to beat the horse that just won’t die. This law professor says he pities those who buy into the media’s law school scam narrative, while in reality, most would pity the many unemployed graduates of his law school. [Huffington Post]

* Here’s a protip for the February bar: don’t fake a disability to get extra time. Even if you end up passing, the bar examiners will find out and pretty much ruin your life. Just ask this UC Hastings Law grad. [Am Law Daily]

* “Also, you probably shouldn’t bring pot with you to the federal courthouse (or any other federal property).” Umm, come on, were the Washington police officers who created this marijuana guidebook high? [CNN]

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.15.12

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* Everyone wants to know who Obama will appoint to the high court during his second term as president. Our very own David Lat chimed in with his suggestions on this panel of notable Supreme Court watchers. [BuzzFeed Politics]

* “If you are writing a biography and either you or your subject are married to a third person, and you have sex, you have done something wrong.” Well, that’s one way to reduce the amount of scandal in your life. [Instapundit]

* Who is the shirtless FBI agent who allegedly sent a sexy picture to Jill Kelley of the Petraeus Pentagon — a picture that got him kicked off the case — and how bodacious is his bod? [Business Insider]

* There is no “best way” to ask for a raise, especially in this economy. But if you’re feeling sassy, you can take some of this sound advice. [Corporette]

* Apologies to all you Beliebers, but California’s Paparazzi Law was just invalidated as unconstitutional. [Cheat Sheet / Daily Beast]

* A time when you really shouldn’t have to yell, “Don’t tase me, bro!”: when you’re trying to use a garden hose to prevent your house from catching fire. [Legal Blog Watch]

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Morning Docket: 11.15.12

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* In a move to “end the vacancy crisis,” one week after being reelected, and one day after the Senate returned to session, Barack Obama nominated seven people for open seats on federal district courts, including two S.D.N.Y. slots. [Blog of Legal Times]

* Dewey know how much the Los Angeles Dodgers will have to pay the now defunct firm for its work on the team’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case? About $13M — the equivalent of their pitcher’s salary, or 62% of their first baseman’s pay. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Which Biglaw firms in the Am Law 200 are the most LGBT friendly? Overall, of the 145 firms that participated in the Human Rights Campaign’s survey, 71 received perfect scores. Absolutely fabulous! [Am Law Daily]

* The American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of Legal Education wants to know what should be done about law schools. This is a time to keep it simple, stupid: change EVERYTHING! [National Law Journal]

* The New York Court of Appeals invoked the Major Disaster Rule for the first time ever, allowing out-of-state attorneys to perform pro bono services for Hurricane Sandy victims. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* William Adams, the Texas family court judge who got caught beating his daughter, returned to the bench yesterday after a year-long suspension. At least he won’t get physical abuse cases, anymore. [Fox News]

* John Coffey, Senior Status Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, RIP. [Journal Sentinel]

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Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now? Post-Election Secession Talk

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The 2008 Secession Proposal

In the wake of last week’s election, citizens from all 50 states have signed petitions calling for secession from the United States. These petitions have been filed with the White House’s “We the People” website, an initiative of the Obama administration to encourage public involvement in government. Once a petition reaches the threshold of 25,000 signatures within 30 days, the White House forwards the petition to its policy experts to draft a formal response.

It’s kind of ironic that these neo-secessionists submitted their formal demands through a government initiative specifically created by Barack Obama. It’s ironic because, while each state’s petition varies a bit in substance, the crux of every petition is “we don’t like that crazy Kenyan socialist president.”

Just to recap: Kenyan Head of Government. Not Kenyan Head of Government. Kenyan. Not Kenyan. Kenyon. Not Kenyan.

As of this hour, only a handful of states have reached the signature threshold to trigger an official White House response. Wanna take a guess which states are ready to bail? If you guessed “states that have past experience with secession,” you’d be right. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have all finished their secession petitions.

Do these petitions signal a new round of secession?

(SPOILER ALERT: No)

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.12.12

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Megyn Kelly

* Barack Obama will not be invited to party with the Supreme Court justices to celebrate his reelection — which is too bad, because from what we hear, they really know how to get down. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Here’s a protip that essentially comes straight from David Petraeus. You can add these to the list of crazy things that your jealous mistress will say to any other woman who so much as looks in your direction. [Althouse]

* “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?” Career alternative for this attorney: bludgeoning Karl Rove with witty election night insults for his failure to admit Obama won Ohio. [Daily Beast]

* Here’s a list of the five kinds of partners you’ll typically find in Biglaw. All you’ve got to do is find their weaknesses, and use them to your advantage. [Greedy Associates / FindLaw]

* In the days ahead, should law schools cut tuition or cut class size? Obviously the solution is to do a little from column A and a little from column B, but you know they’ll never budge on tuition. [PrawfsBlawg]

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What Will a Second Obama Term Mean for the Supreme Court?

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‘I’m coming for you, SCOTUS.’

Legal elites fared well on election night. For example, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren is now Senatrix-elect Elizabeth Warren, after expertly landing Langdell Hall on top of Scott Brown (“I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little pickup truck too!”). As a Divacrat — I support strong, strident, brilliant (sorry Sarah Palin) women, regardless of their political party — I’m already fantasizing about Clinton/Warren in 2016.

Joining Warren on the Senate floor will be another great legal mind who spent some time in Cambridge, Harvard law grad and former SCOTUS clerk Ted Cruz. The Morgan Lewis partner is one of several current or former Biglaw attorneys who won office on Tuesday. (For more, see Am Law Daily.)

The biggest winner of the evening, of course, is also a legal elite: President Barack Obama. He’s a former law professor, like Warren; an HLS grad, like Cruz; and the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Things don’t get much more elite than that.

And in the legal world, things don’t get much more elite than the United States Supreme Court. This brings us to today’s question: What will a second Obama term mean for the Supreme Court?

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Morning Docket: 11.08.12

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* Now that Barack Obama has secured his seat as a two-term president, in-house counsel in the financial sector can kiss their dreams of Dodd-Frank being repealed goodbye. Here are some issues to think about in light of its new footing. [Corporate Counsel]

* “We’re in the early innings of adjusting what value means.” And these days, it looks like “value” is synonymous with “making less money.” Given the results of this third quarter analysis, it’s quite clear that flat is still the new up for Biglaw. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Blow my whistle, baby? A DLA Piper partner filed a $4M suit against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on claims he was maliciously prosecuted as revenge for whistleblowing. [Daily Business Review]

* After being arrested on domestic violence charges, it seems that Steven Guynn of King & Spalding has left the firm. He doesn’t need to sweat his unemployment, because his house is for sale for $3.3M. [Am Law Daily]

* From Biglaw to Midlaw: Morrison Cohen, a midsize firm, managed to poach a partner from Willkie Farr. But how? Apparently this guy was no longer interested in billing “$900-plus” per hour. [New York Law Journal]

* Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will be present at Jared Lee Loughner’s sentencing hearing today, though it is unknown if she herself will speak. His expected sentence is life without parole. [ABC News]

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Gay Marriage: Did The Courts Lead The People?

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First, let me get this out of the way:

Yes, Republicans are waking up this morning to the horrible realization that women and minorities get to vote in this country.

And gays. Oh, yes, gays and lesbians had a really good day yesterday. Republicans are licking their wounds by telling us that Obama had a very narrow victory and that this is still a “center-right” country. And maybe that’s true on economic issues. But on social issues? Homophobia was rejected last night. In its place, weed won. Think about that. After a 0 for 32 success rate with same-sex ballot initiatives, two states legalized gay marriage by popular vote, Washington will almost certainly affirm the legislature’s legalization of same-sex marriage, and one state declined to outlaw it. And we have our first openly lesbian Senator.

But, like Théoden King, it was not Obama of Chicago that lead gays and lesbians to victory out of the Deeping Wall of inequality. Obama was a late and unsteady comer to the fight for equal rights.

In fact, don’t think any national politician can claim the mantle of “leader” on this issue. Instead, I think that the law, through its protectors on our nation’s courts, have brought the people around on this issue….

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