EPA

I got a little sick writing that headline.

* Felonious Monkfish: the surf of your turf may actually be criminally good. [LA Times]

* Looking to naturalize in the US? Hope you’re up to date on your COVID immunity. And very lucky. [NY Daily News]

* …I think a town in Cali just seceded over vaccines? Am I reading this right? [The Guardian]

* SCOTUS will be hearing a case about coal that will determine the strength of the EPA’s bite. [Inside Climate News]

* Some of them that work forces, are the same that keep oaths. They tried to tell you. [NPR]

A fun-filled administrative law battle.

* Jay-Z pointed out that it’s nearly impossible to find a diverse arbitrator and Blank Rome says the claim that white arbitrators may be biased against minorities, “dubious, indeed offensive” and “contravenes every published authority on the matter.” Every published authority? Bold. [American Lawyer]

* Law professor notes that legal technology is going to kill off junior lawyers, which is something I’ve been saying for years now. [Legal Cheek]

* Big 4’s coming yo! (Hong Kong edition) [International]

* The EPA is basically an empty shell these days. [Courthouse News Service]

* The government shutdown raises hacking risks… which doesn’t sound encouraging. [Law360]

* Supreme Court poised to make it easier to access booze. Kavanaugh’s appointment already paying dividends. [NY Times]

* Trump appoints more dicks to the courts. [American Lawyer]

* Neil Gorsuch has already changed the Supreme Court for forever. [Rewire]

* Which attorneys/firms racked up the most SCOTUS wins in 2016? [Empirical SCOTUS]

* One small step back for Trump’s EPA, one giant step forward for breathing. [Ars Technica]

* Yes, it is a message to Donald Trump. No, he won’t listen. [Huffington Post]

* If only we had a system of laws that would prevent a company from buying their largest competitor and thereby decreasing competition in the market. [NPR]

* Scandals might change the media landscape. [Law and More]

* In every good lawyer there’s a little bit of Wonder Woman. [TaxProf Blog]

* Everything you need to know about Biglaw jargon. [Big Law Business]

* Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Wood and the burgeoning environmental racism scandal. [The Root]

* Fascinating podcast about negotiating a career as a woman in the law. [Legal Executive Institute]

* On the buying and selling of FCPA enforcement officials. [FCPA Professor]

* Do you even want to get into a T-14 law school? [Law and More]

* Well, this is an awful idea. [Huffington Post]

* Zillow’s C&D letter against a popular blog. [Jezebel]

* North Carolina lawmakers say they’ve reached a deal to repeal the state’s controversial bathroom bill. I wonder how those negotiations went: “Hey, this law is awful and is costing our state billions. Let’s get rid of it.” “Okay.” I mean that’s probably not how it went, but it’s how it should have gone. [Reuters]

* Five University of California law schools are sharing the wealth after an improper foreclosure verdict results in a big punitive damages award. The judge directed a portion of that money to go to the law schools — $4 million each — earmarked for consumer law education and direct legal services. [Law.com]

* Hawaii successfully converted the TRO on the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban 2.0 into a preliminary injunction. [Hogan Lovells]

* Seattle is the first city to sue over the Trump administration’s threats against sanctuary cities. [LA Times]

* Bridgegate results in prison sentences. Bridget Kelly was sentenced to 18 months, and Bill Baroni got 2 years. [New York Times]

* Doublespeak — the environment edition. [Politico]

* Is Sean Spicer is lying about whether the White House really wants former acting Attorney General Sally Yates to testify to Congress? [The Hill]

* Judge Andrew Napolitano is back at Fox News, and back to conspiracy theories. [CNN]

Never mind!

* Greeeeeaaaaat. Now it’s easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood. [Slate]

* Scott Pruitt is the new EPA chief, but his open records issues continue. [Huffington Post]

* Finding new job opportunities as you age. [Law and More]

* Justice Breyer is an optimist. [Harvard Magazine]

* Law school scholarships and market forces. [TaxProf Blog]

* Kate Spade is exploring her options. [The Fashion Law]

* Randy Maniloff interviews Karen Korematsu, daughter of the late, great Fred Korematsu. [Coverage Opinions]

* RBG’s legacy. [YouTube via How Appealing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chLdAKe9ADw

By almost every account, the Trump Administration is likely to alter substantially the environmental regulatory landscape.

* The ACLU has joined the Y Combinator community. [Y Combinator]

* I choose to believe Judge Gorsuch did this as part of a small effort to rise above the political morass he finds himself in. [The Hill]

* Anne Gorsuch Burford, Neil’s mom, and her controversial time at the EPA, which sound eerily familiar to what we are likely to see again in the next few years. [The Slot]

* If you’re a lawyer that opposes Trump, what should you be doing? [Law and More]

* Judge Gorsuch’s record on LGBTQ rights. [Slate]

* Designers and patents and trade dress, oh my! [The Fashion Law]

* When all strategies for dealing with Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court are flawed. [Rewire]

* How to find the best opportunities to network. [Reboot Your Legal Practice]

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to drastically change the federal government’s role and policies in relation to energy, the environment, and climate change.

Scalia is dead; is the environment saved?

Supreme Court blocks Obama's climate plan. Is this the first sign of a new, more aggressive role for the Supreme Court?

Is it cost efficient to not breath mercury?

* Authorities have cleared the robot built specifically to buy illegal stuff off the dark web. In related news, officer, all that panda meat was bought by my robot… for an art project. [Hopes and Fears]

* The Biglaw pup who posted an anti-West, pro-Islamist rant on YouTube continues to be a headache for Clifford Chance. [Legal Cheek]

* Laurence Tribe’s arguments are getting closer and closer to Homer Simpson’s. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* In case you weren’t counting, there’ve been 95 Senate roll call votes while Loretta Lynch has been waiting… [People For The American Way]

* Lawyer suspended for handing out ecstasy to drug women into sex. I don’t disagree with the outcome, but there’s one pretty troubling aspect of the opinion: “The OLR noted… that his victim was much younger.” She was 22! At a certain point can we just admit women are adults? Focus on the drugging predatory behavior instead of constructing her as an addled-brained ingenue. [Legal Profession Blog]

* Daredevil’s courtroom antics evaluated by New York Judge Matthew Sciarrino. [The Legal Geeks]

* If you’re interested in the legal landscape of marijuana, here’s a cool infographic summing up where we are and how we got here. [Diego Criminal Defense]

* If you’re interested in February bar exam results from across the country, Bar Exam Stats is keeping a running tally complete with a nice map. [Bar Exam Stats]

* Former Facebook GC Ted Ullyot has joined VC firm Andreessen Horowitz to lead a new policy and regulatory affairs group in the firm. [Dealbreaker; TechCrunch]

* It’s not that Justice Kennedy cares more about gay rights than women’s rights, it’s that Justice Kennedy understands gay rights better than women’s rights. That’s a much less charitable but shorter read of this insightful piece by a former Kennedy clerk. [Dorf on Law] * The judge caught making racist and sexist remarks about Charlize Theron’s adoption has been banned from the bench. He wants to be judged on more than this incident. To quote Dr. Hibbert: “And hillbillies want to be called ‘Sons of the Soil’, but it ain’t gonna happen.” [Associated Press via Yahoo! News] * Adam Carolla is keeping his fight against patent trolls alive. Ziggy socky ziggy socky hoy hoy hoy! [Mashable] * Yesterday, the man who shot young Renisha McBride for knocking on his door was convicted of second-degree murder. Sadly, it was just one more in a string of cases where some idiot bought into the rhetoric of shooting first and asking questions later that gun lobbyists have pushed for years. [New York Times] * Here’s something, a former law firm CIO wrote a novella called I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy (affiliate link) based on the allegedly true events of the “law firm spying on its own lawyers, employees and some of its employees’ family members.” Delightful. [Amazon] * “Why Young Lawyers Shouldn’t Hate Hate Hate Baby Boomers Holding On to Jobs.” OK, I’ll go back to hating them for being the self-absorbed Me Generation that made Gordon Gekko a role model. [Law and More] * At oral argument in the marriage equality cases, the lawyers and the Sixth Circuit exhibited… a lot of misconceptions. [Constitutional Accountability Center] * The battle over the EPA’s Carbon rules isn’t over yet. Gear up for a Supreme Court trip. [Breaking Energy] * Do you need to know how to pronounce the SCOTUS case of Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk? There’s an app for that. [Law Technology News]

* For all you surprised by LeBron James, let me remind you: Cleveland is all about two non-consecutive stints. [Wikipedia] * Speaking of basketball, Mitchell Epner takes his talents to CNBC to breakdown the 5 things he learned during the first week of the Donald Sterling trial. [CNBC] * Who is the Litigator of the Week, per Litigation Daily? It’s Daniel Gitner of Lankler Siffert & Wohl because he became the first lawyer to beat the S.D.N.Y. U.S.A.O. in an insider trading case. Also because he’s awesome. Pardon me while I put on my LSW shirt. [The Litigation Daily (sub. req.)] * Hey! Take a second to take our latest law firm survey. We really want your feedback on your perception. [Above the Law] * “5 Reasons the Sleeping Yankees Fan’s Lawyer Should Be Disbarred.” Fair enough. [Internet on Trial] * Will the EPA’s latest carbon rule survive judicial challenge? I would have said “no” but after Homer City… [Breaking Energy] * Do blondes make more money? I guess that’s the trade-off with being the focus of revenge porn. [The Careerist / American Lawyer] * Aereo is back. Sort of. [Comm Law Blog] * A former Patton partner lost his new job at Pillsbury over the Chevron case. Could anybody have suffered more over this case? Oh, right, all the Ecuadorians. [Legal Times] * While you weren’t looking, even fewer people took the LSAT. Obviously. [LSAC]