Osama Bin Laden

The logic of the far left is pretty compelling: Decolonization justifies anything. But does it really?

* It’s almost Halloween, so members of the legal profession had to have expected some spooky legal proceedings to occur this week. It seems that Lori Sforza, a witch priestess from Salem, has been granted a protective order against a well-known warlock. [Associated Press]

* Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would like to remove marijuana from the list of dangerous controlled substances that are regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which would free up states to legalize it on their own terms. Stoners are really feeling the “Bern” now, in more ways than one. [Washington Post]

* Four federal lawyers spent weeks nailing down the legalities behind the killing of Osama bin Laden, and they weren’t allowed to ask Attorney General Eric Holder for help for fear of leaks to the press. They even had to do the legal research themselves! [New York Times]

* According to a new report by the National Association of Women Lawyers, there’s been no “appreciable progress” made for women in the nation’s largest law firms since at least 2006. This is extremely disheartening. Please do better, Biglaw. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* You know Walgreens is buying Rite Aid for $9.4B, but you might not have known which law firms were prescribing advice in the mega pharmacy merger. Skadden, Jones Day, Simpson Thacher, and Weil Gotshal got billable scripts. [DealBook / New York Times]

How open should transgender lawyers be about their lives and backgrounds?

* A bipartisan immigration reform bill made its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee and will head to the Senate floor. Of course, the amendments in support of gay marriage didn’t make it in, but that may be moot soon anyway. [CNN]

* IRS official Lois Lerner may not be very “good at math,” but at least she seems to know the basic principles of constitutional law. She’ll invoke her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Oversight Committee today. [Politico]

* The D.C. Circuit ruled that the top secret Osama bin Laden death photos will remain top secret, but the internet’s desperate cries of “pics or it didn’t happen” will live on in our hearts. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Attention naysayers: it may be time to face the music. According to the latest Altman Weil survey, most law firm leaders think all of these fun recession-driven changes are here to stay. [Am Law Daily]

* Twenty-two law firms are banding together to fight against fraudulent financial products on a worldwide scale. It’s too bad this legal alliance didn’t exist before the Bernie Madoff scandal. [New York Times]

* It looks like New Jersey may soon be hopping aboard the pro bono work before bar admission train. You better hope you get your clinic placements in order, people. [New Jersey Law Journal (sub. req.)]

* The results for the February 2013 bar exam in California are out, and they’re frightening. It’s time to try that acting thing again, because only 41 percent of all test takers passed the exam. [The Recorder]

* Jodi Arias is now begging jurors to allow her to live out the rest of her days in prison. She wants to contribute to society by painting, recycling, and… not slashing additional throats. Lovely. [Fox News]

* In case you didn’t catch this yesterday when it was announced, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, is currently being held for trial in New York City. This will be the most unbiased jury in the world. /sarcasm [New York Times]

* According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, democracies shouldn’t depend “on what nine unelected people from a narrow legal background have to say.” Well then! I suppose we should look forward to the uprising. [The Big Story / Associated Press]

* Cooley and Winston & Strawn are working on the $600 million sale of everyone’s favorite store for slutty Halloween costumes, Hot Topic. Apparently that store still exists. I had no idea. Good to know! [Am Law Daily]

* Proskauer Rose is now the most powerful Biglaw firm in the sports world. It just goes to show that even if you’re too awkward to play ball, it doesn’t mean you can’t hit it out of the park in court. [Sports Illustrated]

* “I would love to blink and wake up in 10 years and see where all this ends.” Unemployed law grads are probably saying the same thing, but hopefully these law school law firms will be beneficial. [New York Times]

* A group of legal heavy hitters — “The Coalition of Concerned Colleagues” — submitted a cutting letter to the Task ABA Force on Legal Education. Next time, try “The Law School Avengers.” [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* If it’s proven that enough Native Americans find the Redskins team name offensive, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board may cancel the mark. Would it be offensive to call the TTAB Indian givers? [National Law Journal]

* An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but benchslaps are another thing entirely. Sorry, Gibson Dunn, but your document production “mistake” was “unacceptable” in Judge Paul Grewal’s courtroom. [Bloomberg]

* “Almost anything associated with him is necessarily of concern.” Thanks to the D.C. Circuit, Osama bin Laden’s death photos may never see the light of day, no matter how many FOIA requests you file. Sorry, you’ll have to settle for the Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty. [McClatchy Newspapers]

* Some would argue that the opinions written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit are like Lex Luthor’s ring in that they keep the heirs of Superman’s co-creator at bay like kryptonite. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* Ay dios mio, al parecer esta es una gran noticia para la escuela! Yale Law has hired Cristina Rodríguez, an expert in immigration law, as its first Hispanic professor in a tenured position. [National Law Journal]

* Prosecutors established probable cause in the Aurora movie theater shooting case and James Holmes has been ordered to stand trial, but his lawyers aren’t ready to enter his likely NGRI plea yet. [Bloomberg]

* Everyone saw this coming, but that doesn’t mean they have to be any less disgusted by it: Jerry Sandusky filed a motion to get a new trial just three months after being sentenced for his sex abuse conviction. [CNN]

* According to a CNN poll, 67 percent of people who watched the debate thought Mitt Romney won, while only 25 percent thought Barack Obama won. Well, either way you slice it, there was definitely one loser: poor old Jim Lehrer. [CNN]

* If Barack Obama could’ve had his way, he would’ve put Osama bin Laden on trial to display American due process and the rule of law. We suppose that now he’ll just have to take credit for being the man who ordered the kill shot. [WSJ Law Blog]

* A handful of Biglaw firms advised on the T-Mobile and MetroPCS merger, but Telecommunications Law Partners, a boutique firm, showed up to prove it could hang with the big boys. [DealBook / New York Times]

* From boutique to Biglaw? Joseph Bachelder, an executive compensation expert, shuttered his 10-lawyer firm in favor of joining McCarter & English as special counsel in New York. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Remember Ellen Pao, the former Cravath associate who sued Kleiner Perkins for sex discrimination? She now claims that the VC firm fired her. Of course, like everything else, KPCB denies it. [Bits / New York Times]

* A J.D. isn’t a hoax, but if law schools keep admitting huge classes, the degree will become one. The dean of UC Hastings Law thinks law schools should’ve reduced their class sizes a long time ago. [Huffington Post]

* Justice Clarence Thomas for president? Hey, it could happen. Lat and Kash’s 2010 proposal is getting a second look. [Daily Beast]

* Speaking of presidents, the Arizona and Michigan primary elections are today. I know folks on the coast often don’t pay too much attention to those middle-of-the-country states, but it will be interesting to see what the Illegal Immigration State and Crippled American Auto State have to say about our ragtag bunch of Republican presidential candidates. [New York Times]

* Emails published yesterday by Wikileaks appear to show that Pakistani military intelligence knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding in the months before Seal Team Six raided his garrison and killed him. I hope Wikileaks has juicier material in the pipeline? [Telegraph]

* Congratulations to Tony West, who will become acting associate attorney general, the No. 3 post in the Justice Department. [Chicago Tribune]

* Interesting report on tensions between the White House and the NSA, which has tried to get permission to monitor private web activity, perhaps at the expense of privacy. But Google knows everything you do on your computer, so why shouldn’t the government? [Washington Post]

* The people at the Department of Justice really don’t want you to see Osama bin Laden’s death photos, but don’t they realize that the internet needs pics or it didn’t happen? [Blog of Legal Times] * Déjà vu: Hustler Magazine’s nude photo spread of Nancy Benoit was back on the Eleventh Circuit’s docket this […]

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the day a little-known heroin addict called Russell Brand turned up for work dressed as Osama Bin Laden, and was promptly fired by his then-employer, MTV. After some ensuing years knocking around the lower echelons of British light entertainment, Brand got himself together and landed a role presenting the […]

* Akin Gump gets a major influx of renewable energy partners, from Chadbourne. And I bet they only used wind and solar power to jump ship. [PR Newswire] * I keep saying, people will start going for merit-based compensation the minute merit-based compensation pays more than lockstep compensation for all (or almost all) associates. Until […]

* We expected this would happen. The Osama Bin Laden death photos have been FOIA’d. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times] * Some Biglaw firms are freezing associate pay? Blimey! [Roll On Friday] * What is Monica Goodling — now known as Monica Krempasky, since her 2008 marriage to RedState founder Michael Krempasky — […]

I have not the slightest doubt that it was entirely appropriate for U.S. forces to [take out Osama bin Laden]…. I must say I was proud of the SEALs. — Justice John Paul Stevens, in remarks made yesterday at a dinner in Chicago. (Recall that Justice Stevens served in the Navy during World War II.)

* Self-driving cars in Vegas? Yes please, I want to play destination roulette. [ABA Journal] * Wow, I guess law schools are still afraid of being exposed by the New York Times. Here’s some Case Western news, from Professor Jonathan Adler. [Volokh Conspiracy] * A follow-up on Tim Wu’s recent Quote of the Day about […]

Everybody has an opinion on whether or not the Obama administration should release kill shots of Osama bin Laden. It’s a tough question. And there are intelligent ways to disagree with the president’s opinion (see Jon Stewart’s impassioned plea). Or you could just call the president a pussy accuse the president of “pussyfooting” on Twitter, […]

* DOMA dude Paul Clement filed his first brief as lead counsel for 26 states seeking to nullify Obamacare. In a land of socialist, freeloading, hippie queers, one man stands alone. [Atlanta Journal Constitution] * Actually, that’s not true — The Cooch has Clement’s back (twhs), Tweeting all the misspelled and hilarious punchlines that are […]

Imagine what would have happened if the Obama administration had been running things immediately following 9/11. After their “arrest,” we would have read [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] and [Abu Faraj al-Libi] their Miranda rights, provided them legal counsel, sent them to the U.S. for detention, and granted them all the rights provided a U.S. citizen in […]

* This article details how the killing of Osama bin Laden was legal. That old honey badger Elie says he doesn’t give a s**t. [Christian Science Monitor] * Former Winston & Strawn partner Jonathan Bristol pleaded guilty to money laundering charges yesterday in connection with Kenneth Starr’s Ponzi scheme. You know what’s a cool word? […]

As you might have heard, United States special forces killed Osama Bin Laden. Let’s take a moment to be happy about that, but also to remember Bin Laden’s many, many victims. Thank God he was killed, not “captured.” If he had been captured, there would have been some kind of trial. Some kind of fake, […]

Osama Bin Laden is dead! The television people are reminding us that today is the eighth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished.” Which is kind of awesome. Because now it is. Not only has he been killed, but the U.S. has his body. God bless America. God bless the memories of the many victims of 9/11. Let […]