I just wanted to get out there, let my talents shine, and show that I, too, can be a constitutional originalist and claim strict adherence to the intent of those who framed our nation’s founding document, thereby advancing a conservative agenda. Pretty sure I nailed it, too.
– “Supreme Court Understudy Fills In For Scalia,” The Onion.
Sam, you ought to thank Harriet Miers for making this possible.
– President George W. Bush to newly confirmed Justice Samuel Alito, as recounted in President Bush’s new memoir, Decision Points (via Jan Crawford).
Does the statute cover depictions of violence against Vulcans?
– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, asking whether video violence against “an image of a human being” could be extended to human-like figures, during oral arguments for Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association.
Bruno: coming to a courtroom near you?
* Let’s just be honest… if your boobs have been on Girls Gone Wild, no one really cares about your good name — apparently not even you. [Washington Post]
* The Supreme Court is more pro-business than it used to be. Did I just step out of a DeLorean? We knew this last January (or even earlier — say, 2008). [Bloomberg]
* The latest Sacha Baron Cohen litigant says he was roughed up on the set of “Bruno.” But did he have to protect himself from a dildo? [Associated Press]
* Vince McMahon dropped the Corporate Elbow on Connecticut’s Secretary of State with this smackdown of a lawsuit. I know way too many wrestling terms — thanks, boyfriend. [Hartford Courant]
* The only war that France ever won was against its own people. Maybe they’re hoping that lightning will strike twice with this new antipiracy law. [Wall Street Journal]
* Minorities in New York get stopped and frisked more often than whites. In other news, the sun is shiny, and the sky is blue. Now give me my $375 an hour. [New York Times]
I wasn’t able to catch Larry King’s interview with Clarence Thomas’s ex-girlfriend, Lillian McEwen. I had prior commitments (how ’bout them Cowboys). But after reading reports all morning, I can see why her memoirs are stuck in the “manuscript” stage. There doesn’t seem to be any “there” there.
Perhaps the most interesting thing we learned is that Lillian McEwen would rather date a raving, porn-obsessed alcoholic than an angry, black conservative. Don’t get me wrong, I feel precisely the same way. But if this is all the “dirt” she’s got on Thomas, then it’s difficult to see how this materially impacts our understanding of the man.
And that’s assuming that everything she said is true….
It was probably T.M.I. But that’s the way it is.
– Lillian McEwen, a lawyer and ex-girlfriend of Justice Clarence Thomas, talking about how she showed her memoir (in which Thomas features prominently) to her daughter.
Payback may be a bitch, but she rarely moves so swiftly. As we just mentioned in Fame Brief, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is fielding more allegations about his sexual preferences today, after former girlfriend Lillian McEwen made some “explosive” statements to the Washington Post about her time with the Supreme Court justice.
I put “explosive” in scare quotes, because really all we’re learning from McEwen is that Justice Thomas likes (or liked, she dated him a long time ago) boobs and porn. Is that really such a big deal? Hey, quick question: Would you rather be reading this article about Clarence Thomas and Lillian McEwen right now, or doing something that involved boobs and porn? I know what my answer is. But like most of you, apparently watching boobs and porn is “FROWNED UPON in this ESTABLISHMENT.”
But does enjoying (sorry, allegedly enjoying) the mystifying undulations of the opposite sex make Clarence Thomas unfit to sit on the high court?
Continue reading “Clarence & Ginni Thomas Learn About Karma the Hard Way”
Ginni Thomas could be accidently dialing Anita Hill in this photo.
By now it’s ancient news that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas — wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, Tea Party-er, and Heritage Club Foundation member — lost her damn mind and called Anita Hill. Many news outlets have speculated as to what in God’s name could possibly have motivated Ginni to “reach across the airwaves and the years” and ask for an apology, like some creepy ex-boyfriend from high school who hasn’t moved on.
Some of them conclude with infuriating non-theories like “only time will tell” or “we’ll never know.” That is unacceptable.
I’ve compiled a list of sung and unsung theories of the phone call and included a reader poll, so that we as a community can determine what really happened, record it in Wikipedia, and get on with our lives. Because, as Ginni herself might say, this is America. And majority rules….
Continue reading “Fame Brief: Seven Theories on Ginni Thomas’s Call to Anita Hill & A Reader Poll”
As I tweeted last night, and we mentioned in Morning Docket earlier today, this Ginni Thomas story is the most ridiculous thing ever. In case you’ve been excommunicated from the internet all day, here’s what happened.
Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, called up Anita Hill — the woman Justice Thomas allegedly sexually harassed — and asked her to apologize. According to a statement released by Ms. Thomas, she called Hill to “extend an olive branch.”
I’ve got lots and lots of jokes about this — most of which are unfit for publication (trust me, you do not want me to go there). So instead of taking pot shots that would range from soft drink preferences to the state of interracial dating and marriage, let’s just ask this simple question:
What was she thinking?
Here’s a fun little judicial sight-ation from the weekend. On Saturday night, at around 9 p.m., Justice Elena Kagan was spotted in the elevator of the luxury apartment building in downtown D.C. that she calls home.
According to our tipster, Justice Kagan was wearing “mom jeans.” And carrying a pizza.
The 112th justice of the United States Supreme Court, carrying her own pizza? This is a scandal of the highest order.
A few years ago, we were traumatized by the sight of then-Judge Michael Chertoff carrying his own takeout lunch (see here, item #4). But he was a mere circuit judge, and Elena Kagan is a Supreme Court justice.
Shouldn’t Justice Kagan have one of her clerks deliver pizza to her on Saturday night? It diminishes the dignity of the entire federal judiciary to know that an associate justice of the Supreme Court has to fetch her own pizza.
So, let’s get to the important part: What brand of pizza does Her Honor favor?
Continue reading “The Eyes of the Law: Justices Eat Pizza Too”
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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