Politics

Non-Sequiturs: 05.23.13

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* Congratulations to Sri Srinivasan on his unanimous confirmation to the D.C. Circuit. Fun Fact: Sri Srinivasan played high school basketball on the same team as Danny Manning. No joke there, it’s just a random fun fact I know about him. [USA Today]

* Should health care cover sex for people with disabilities? Sure, but spring for the Cadillac plan so you don’t get stuck with Helen Hunt. [PrawfsBlawg]

* The federal government has almost $5 billion invested in law schools. That’s around 4.4% of the total federal investment in higher education. So screw you future microbiologist, we need moar lawyerz! [Law School Cafe]

* Skadden covertly recruited its lawyers and staff best versed in Star Wars to sort through the intellectual property rights to 209 characters to make sure Disney successfully acquired the proper rights for every core character. If they had any decency they’d just let Jar Jar go. [Hollywood Reporter via ABA Journal]

* Law school to reconsider applicant it dinged the first time around. As Paul Caron notes, “Money quote from Dean: ‘we wanted to make sure that we weren’t taking advantage of them.’” How magnanimous of you to reconsider taking their money. [Tax Prof Blog]

* Judges manipulated the system to promote a vendor they personally operated on the State’s time. That’s one way to pad that judicial salary. [Washington Times]

* Kirkland and Ellis associate Roy Cho is mulling a run for Congress in New Jersey. It’s not official yet, but he has set up a campaign-ready Twitter account, and in politics that’s like changing to “In a Relationship” on Facebook. [NJ Herald]

* Zachary Cohn, age 6, drowned after becoming entrapped in the drain of his family’s swimming pool. The Connecticut Superior Court recently finalized a combined settlement of $40 million to Zac’s estate. Now his parents have taken all of the net proceeds from the case to establish The ZAC Foundation to tackle the nationwide issue of pool suction entrapment in private and public pools and to improve overall water safety. [Daily Business Review]

* The gender and age discrimination suit between Pat Martone and Ropes & Gray settled. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]

* The Times Publishing House is suing a 22-year-old law student for defamation. A newspaper suing a new media reporter with the very laws that land them constantly in court? *Cuts off nose to spite face* [Spicy IP India]

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Righteous Indignation: Conservatives Benchslapping Conservatives

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided City of Arlington v. FCC. The question before SCOTUS was whether courts must defer to a federal regulatory agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity even when that ambiguity involves the scope of the agency’s authority — its own jurisdiction.

Justice Scalia wrote for the majority, holding that even in cases such as this one, agencies are entitled to the usual deference established in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. — aka Chevron deference. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Kennedy and Alito.

The outcome of City of Arlington should be noteworthy to Court watchers — and conservatives in particular — for several reasons. First, the Scalia-Roberts split quiets the simplistic refrain that SCOTUS decides cases down rigid liberal-conservative lines. Second, it highlights an ongoing debate among conservative members of the Court about fundamental issues concerning the separation of powers and constitutional governance. Third, the Scalia and Roberts opinions demonstrate that, far from reserving their barbs for the left, conservatives can be pretty darn snarky amongst themselves.

So, let’s have a closer look….

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‘Corruption of Blood’ Amendment Withdrawn After House Supporter Is Reminded What Century It Is

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I’ll get you my little Iranian… and your little dog too.

The sins of the father should not be visited on the son. Honestly, if House Mystal was in Westeros (I think I know what sigil you think I should have), those would be our words. It’s awful when a whole family is shamed for the mistakes of one member. Nobody wants to be in the position of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s crazy uncle.

Thankfully, in civilized societies, we don’t hold children criminally responsible for the crimes of their forebears. That’s pretty much a bedrock principle of modern jurisprudence. Guilt by association might happen in the public sphere (sorry, Jeb Bush — I think everybody knows your brother, President Fredo, should have been passed over), but in the legal sphere, we have a little thing called “due process.”

It’s a constitutional principle Representative Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) had to be reminded of yesterday…

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Who Wants To Work In The West Wing?

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The West Wing, one of television’s most celebrated dramas, ended its run six years ago this month. But in the hearts of many lawyers, the West Wing lives on, as the stuff of dreams.

Working in the West Wing of the White House — in proximity to the President of the United States, on the most important issues of the day — is why many people go to law school. [FN1] But the vast majority of them never come close to making that dream a reality.

How can you land a job in the West Wing? Here’s the story of how one lawyer did it. And she didn’t even have to toil that long in the Biglaw salt mine….

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District Attorney and Major TV Network Sued Over Stupid Reality Show

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The most tragically stupid decision was greenlighting a reality show about lawyers. No one cares about watching real-life lawyering. That’s why Nancy Grace exists — to boil salacious cases down to sound bites so viewers don’t have to watch real lawyers.

But almost as stupid was greenlighting a show about a district attorney on the eve of an election and not expecting to run afoul of campaign finance laws.

Imagine running against an incumbent armed with a glossy, major network reality show constantly hyping his effectiveness in office. In the context of a district attorney election, imagine having to run against Adam Schiff after everyone watched a Law & Order marathon.

If that seems unfair, one challenger agrees with you…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.20.13

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* Justin Bieber has apparently abandoned his 20-week-old monkey, Mally, after having her confiscated because he couldn’t comply with animal control laws in Germany. Now in a shelter somewhere in Germany, there’s one more lonely girl. [Lowering the Bar]

* Ann Althouse posted FOUR TIMES about Barack Obama’s umbrella over the weekend. Somebody is really putting off grading those papers. [Althouse]

* Alabama judge faces $25 million lawsuit alleging he improperly took a case from another judge and issued damaging rulings. This is the judge who ran against Chief Justice Roy “Don’t Remove the Ten Commandments From the Courthouse” Moore. The moral of the story is: don’t use the Alabama judicial system. [Legal Schnauzer]

* The FBI may be looking into whether lawyers conspired to have opposing counsel arrested on DUI charges by using a “comely paralegal” to get the lawyer drunk and then ask him to drive her home. [Tampa Bay Times]

* Statewide Virginia Republican candidates are no friends of the libertarian wing of the conservative movement. On the other hand, are there viable conservative candidates not named “Paul” that are friends of the libertarian wing of the conservative movement? [CATO at Liberty]

* The IRS scandal gets the SNL treatment courtesy of Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Video after the jump…

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On The IRS Mess And What It Means To Be A Lawyer

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“In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn’t allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he’d have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he’d really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again.”

– David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (affiliate link)

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a longish piece on just what in the hell was happening at the IRS office in Cincinnati. A Kafkaesque tale of bureaucratic intrigue, the treatment does little to tell us why in the hell we care just what in the hell was happening at the IRS office in Cincinnati. I’ll leave that determination to the qualified pundits and their punditry.

But what the Times article does do is shine a light on what it means to be a lawyer. What it means to others and what it means to us. Completely by accident, the mess at the IRS tells us how important lawyers are. And how impotent we are. This makes little sense even as I type it. But bear with me. Please. It is not often that meaning comes so nicely gift-wrapped.

What does it mean to be a lawyer?

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Maybe The Toronto Mayor Should Skip The P.R. Lawyer and Go Straight To Criminal Defense Attorney?

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As we mentioned in Morning Docket today, Gawker has a story about the Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, smoking crack.

It’s a delightful tale about how a conservative was apparently caught on a camera phone smoking crack, slurring his speech, and calling people fa**ots. The full video isn’t available, because of course the people who shot it want money. If you want to contribute to that cause, Gawker has set up a Kickstarter fund to buy the video.

That’s all well and good. Personally I would now like to see Anthony Weiner and Rob Ford face off to become the next mayor of Buffalo. But this afternoon I really want to focus on the lawyer Rob Ford apparently hired to try to kill the Gawker story. Because Saul Goodman, he is not…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.16.13

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* A White House petition started by a young lawyer asking that at least student loan interest be tax deductible like interest on a mortgage to help out those folks like, frankly, most lawyers, who make too much money to deduct their student loans. [WhiteHouse.gov]

* Antoinette “Toni” Bush, partner-in-charge of Skadden’s communications group, is leaving the firm to become global head of government affairs for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Free tip: brush up on your hacking law. [Am Law Daily]

* The Department of Energy may adopt a new “commercial maturity test” to get rolling on the backlog of liquid natural gas export license requests. And that, of course, will spur the inevitable lawsuits. [Breaking Energy]

* Apparently, President Obama dreams of “going Bulworth and resents the “Harry Potter theory of the presidency,” that the President can wave a wand and make things happen. So he’s pro Pras, Maya, and ODB, and anti-Hagrid. Who’s anti-Hagrid??? [New York Times]

* Lois Lerner, the manager at the center of the IRS “scandal,” has backed out of delivering the keynote at the WNEU Law commencement. I’m pretty sure Staci would do a better job… of running the IRS. [Boston Herald]

* Overlawyered blasts the Daily Caller for trying to tie Lerner to Obama via her husband, Michael Miles of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan because the large firm had some ties to Obama. Blerg. Meanwhile, this “partisan scandal” is turning out to be bipartisan entirely based on which IRS office the groups dealt with. [Overlawyered]

* Congratulations to this guy. Must have been a hell of a feast. [WDRB]

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Righteous Indignation: On the IRS Abuses and the Banality of Bureaucratic Evil

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.

You probably saw this week’s topic coming. Until the folks at One First Street start tossing Elie and me some fresh meat to tussle over, my indignation — righteous as it is — must be directed elsewhere. Unless EM wants to argue that, when SCOTUS decided that Pelkey’s claim was not preempted by federal law in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, the Nine were, like, racist or something. (Query: what race is Dan? Where was the supplemental briefing?!)

So. The IRS’s targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status. I couldn’t not talk about this scandal, right?

Truly, I kept avoiding devoting this week’s column to the IRS abuses. Seriously.

For one thing, I was not initially so scandalized by this supposed scandal, though I was appropriately dismayed. Second, this story is still developing. So, I hereby reserve my right to be feverishly pissed off later….

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