Recommendation Letters

* President Trump included a signing statement when approving the funding legislation that will keep the government running through the end of September. In it, he questioned the limits of his spending power and suggested he’d ignore advance notice requirements for Congress when taking foreign policy and military actions, amid other troubling stances on legal matters. [Bloomberg Politics]

* In other news, sometime this week — possibly even later today — President Trump is expected to announce some of his picks for the more than 120 vacancies in the lower federal courts, all of whom are known for their “scholarly credentials and ‘intellectual boldness.'” As luck would have it, we already scooped predicted the names of many of the nominees. [New York Times]

* #NoFilter necessary for this case: The End, a Brooklyn coffee shop, has filed suit against Starbucks, claiming the coffee giant copied its Unicorn Latte with its highly Instagrammable Unicorn Frappuccino. The End registered the name of its whimsical drink with the Patent and Trademark Office in January, and seeks all profits Starbucks made from its sale of its mythical sugar bomb. [Newsweek]

* Even if you’re a passenger in a car, you’ll have no reprieve from police searches in this state. The Utah Supreme Court has ruled that police may ask for passengers’ identification and run background checks on them — without any suspicion of wrongdoing — during traffic stops, and that doing so will not stand as a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. [FOX 13 Salt Lake City]

* Think you’ve found the perfect person to write you a law school rec letter? Think again. “Like in the world of dating, it helps if your partner/prospective partner is supportive of your plans.” Here are some red flags to look out for that may indicate your reference isn’t going to meet your deadlines, isn’t going to remember who you are, and isn’t going to write you a glowing letter. [U.S. News]

* Celebrity trial attorney Mark Geragos has filed a $100 million class-action lawsuit against rapper Ja Rule and entrepreneur Billy McFarland, the organizers of the ill-fated Fyre Festival, an event marked by “incompetence on an almost inconceivable scale.” In an interview with Variety, Geragos referred to the disastrous event as a “Petri dish of fraud, incompetence and hubris.” [Variety]

* Well, this is one way to deal with the Free the Nipple campaign: ban sideboob and underboob. And while you’re at it, legalize public boners because consistency is hard. Heh. [Vice]

* The Pope’s homelessness chops are on point. [What About Paris?]

* This is the absolute best way to troll prestige whores. [Daily Lawyer Tips]

* Is this the best recommendation letter ever? [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* This is how bigamy cases go down in the world of Facebook. [Legal Juice]

* Using forensic evidence to document human rights abuses. [Pacific Standard]

* What’s going on with Janet Yellen? [Dealbreaker]

* Interesting to legal nerds (and maybe others). The Justice Department’s very influential Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — the division that produced the torture memos, among other things — cranks out a lot of law professors. [Yale Journal on Regulation]

* If President Obama could send a love note to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, it’d probably say something like this: “Girl, you look good. Won’t you back that ass up?” [ABC News]

* The fun things you learn during a Supreme Court justice’s book tour: apparently Sandra Day O’Connor dated William Rehnquist when they were at school together at Stanford Law. [Legal Times]

* When it comes to law firms, size really does matter. Quite a few midsize firms had the urge to merge in the first quarter of 2013, according to the latest Altman Weil survey. [Am Law Daily]

* In case you haven’t heard the news by now, NYU Law School has a new dean, and he was poached fresh from Columbia. The bonus here is that he’s actually pretty cute. We’ll have more on this story later today. [NYU Law News]

* Law faculties may be a tad too liberal, say some at Harvard Law School, which is basically a bastion of leftie law professors. Cut to Ted Cruz muttering about Commies under his breath. [USA Today]

* Here’s an obvious protip that may not be obvious to 0Ls: if you’re going to ask for a recommendation letter, you should probably make sure that it’s going to be a positive one. [U.S. News & World Report]