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  • Morning Docket: 01.08.18
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 01.08.18

    * Okay, let’s get this straight: Roy Moore’s Jewish lawyer isn’t Richard Jaffe, the one who voted for Doug Jones; no, Roy Moore’s Jewish lawyer is Martin Wishnatsky, the one who “has accepted Christ” as his savior. [Washington Post]

    * In our last Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch, we focused a bit on the fact that rumored retiree Justice Anthony Kennedy hired a full set of clerks for OT 2018, but in case you missed it, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg already has a full set of clerks for OT 2019. The Notorious one isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. [Newsweek]

    * Lawyers for the Department of Justice who are attempting to defend the Trump administration’s rescission of the DACA program have asked Judge William Alsup, who is handling the case, to ignore our “very stable genius” president’s recent tweets regarding the immigration policy. [The Recorder]

    * Evan Greebel, pharma bro Martin Shkreli’s ex-lawyer, is facing hard prison time for conspiracy, but one of the juror’s who convicted him is having second thoughts. The former Biglaw partner better hope that Judge Kiyo Matsumoto decides to reopen his case. [Big Law Business]

    * In what may have been some sort of a Christmas miracle, the legal sector witnessed a very slight uptick in jobs in December. Beggars can’t be choosers, so a gain of 600 jobs is better than nothing at all. Employment in the profession is still nowhere near where it once was before the recession. [American Lawyer]

    * Lewis Donelson, cofounder of Baker Donelson, RIP. [Memphis Business Journal]

  • Morning Docket: 12.04.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 12.04.17

    * This weekend was full of huge news in Trumpland. Following Michael Flynn’s guilty plea, President Trump tweeted that he fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI. If you recall, Trump originally said that he’d fired Flynn because his former NSA adviser had lied to Vice President Pence. [New York Times]

    * Here’s why Trump’s shift is pretty important, according to Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller: “Oh my god, he just admitted to obstruction of justice. If Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to let it go, then there is your case.” [The Hill]

    * Slow your roll, prosecutors. President Trump is now saying that he never asked former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn, even though Comey testified to that version of events before Congress. Per Trump, it’s “[j]ust more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” [CBS News]

    * But wait, there’s even more! It seems that President Trump wasn’t the author of that tweet. Apparently it was written by one of his lawyers, John Dowd, who now says it was “[his] mistake” as he’s “out of the tweeting business” and “did not mean to break news.” [Washington Post; Axios]

    * Finally, in case you missed it, the Senate passed its version of the tax bill in the dead of night as it was still being written, with a 20 percent tax rate for corporations. Now, President Trump — the client who will never be satisfied — says that rate might go up to 22 percent. [CNBC]

    * Last, but not least, President Trump has endorsed accused child-toucher Roy Moore via tweet (obviously) for the Republican Senate seat that was left open by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. This has reached a whole new level of ridiculousness. [CNN]

    * In other news, CVS is planning to buy Aetna for $69 billion. We’ve not yet seen which law firms are representing the companies on the deal, but this is a move that could seriously change the way our health care system looks. (And as an aside, it could seriously change the way your EOBs look, since CVS is a fan of those absurdly long receipts.) [DealBook / New York Times]

    * Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who served just three months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, is now appealing, claiming that his trial was “fundamentally unfair.” Most would counter that raping an unconscious woman in the street is what’s really “fundamentally unfair,” but that’s neither here nor there. [NBC News]

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  • Non-Sequiturs: 08.11.17
    Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 08.11.17

    * SNL’s take on the Mooch. [Huffington Post]

    * Outside of the T14, the news for law schools isn’t good. [TaxProf Blog]

    * Ethics, smethics. The one thing the Trump presidency is good at is making money — for Trump. [Business Insider]

    * Penn Law is bucking the GRE trend. [Daily Pennsylvanian]

    * You aren’t being paranoid, they’re coming after your civil rights. [The Slot]

    * Advice for providing legal representation to iGen. [Law and More]

    * A look at the procedure involved in Sarah Palin’s defamation case. [PrawfsBlawg]

    * Who is next on Trump’s Twitter frenemy list? [Salon]

  • Non-Sequiturs: 07.28.17
    Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 07.28.17

    * At a rally in front of Long Island police, Trump said that he was okay with police being “rougher” on arrested suspects. And the officers roared their approval. I grew up on Long Island. The first person to ever call me the N-word to my face was a Long Island police officer when I was a tween. I can’t explain to you guys how absolutely chilling and terrifying this moment was for me. I wish you MAGA people, you soft bigots who think that this is a game of your guy versus political correctness, could understand why people like me will never stop fighting people like you. [Lawyers Guns and Money]

    * I’ve kind of moved passed the point where the courts tell Donald Trump that he cannot block people on Twitter, because I expect that will be a fairly obvious decision. I’m now wondering if the courts can order the specific performance of Trump unblocking those he doesn’t wish to hear. And, naturally, I’m wondering if people tweeting at him, day and night, things he can’t block, will make him cry. [Slate]

    * This guy argues, more or less, that partisan gerrymandering is not the cause of our factionalized democracy, it’s merely one of the results. I think it’s more of a feedback loop: we’re factionalized, which leads to gerrymandering, which leads to more factionalization, and so on, until we get to the point where 60 million people can elect a crazy person to lord over a country of 320 million souls. That also probably explains why Dunkirk is going to win an Oscar. [Election Law Blog]

    * I’d like to think of John Roberts vacationing in New Zealand like Gandalf visiting The Shire. I can picture him, smoking some pipe weed, setting off some fireworks, enjoying a moment untrammeled by thoughts of what’s happening back at home in Mordor. [Constitution Daily]

    * I assume the GOP will now move onto tax reform, which is codenamed: “Operation Cannot Possibly Fail, Again.” Tax Prof blog has put together a fine collection of links on where we stand with that. [Tax Prof Blog]

    * Checking in with white American news sources, it would appear that Fox News doesn’t recognize the defeat of the Republicans’ signature policy proposal for the past seven years as “headline” news. They’re much more interested in getting a special prosecutor to look into a couple of women who hold no public office, and the FBI director who handed them an election. But they’re not totally ignorant of what’s going on. “Couple jump to their deaths because they ‘can’t afford’ health care,” is a below-the-fold story. The Republican plan wouldn’t have reduced costs for this couple, nor made it easier for them to get the mental health services that could have saved their lives. But when you support a president whose stated policy goal is “implosion,” human tragedy furthers your aims. [Fox News]

    * In case you missed last night’s dramatic moment:

    https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/890815543258865664

  • Morning Docket: 07.26.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 07.26.17

    * “[W]e will see what happens, time will tell, time will tell.” President Trump has reiterated how “very disappointed” he is that Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, but hasn’t publicly stated in so many words that he wants to fire the AG. For what it’s worth, it didn’t take very long for time to tell what happened with James Comey, Marc Kasowitz, and Sean Spicer. [CNN]

    * Which in-house officials make the most money? Big Law Business took a look at the summary compensation tables from the 500 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue to figure out the answer. Take a look at the list of the 30 highest earners, gasp at their eye-popping compensation, and then wonder why you haven’t decided to move in-house yet. [Big Law Business]

    * A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit struck down Washington, D.C., regulations which required that residents prove they had a “good reason to fear injury” in order to obtain a concealed-carry permit for firearms, ruling that the carrying of firearms was a “core” Second Amendment right. The District may seek an en banc review of the decision. [BuzzFeed]

    * “There is not a law firm function that happens without alcohol” Do law firms enable alcoholism? In a word, yes — and the fact that we still have to ask ourselves this when one-third of attorneys have admitted that they drink too much and even more have admitted that they have a serious drinking problem is simply appalling. [Am Law Daily]

    * The bar exam is now well underway, and those whose fates are now in the hands of the bar examiners have taken to Twitter to unleash their anxieties via humorous tweets. Here are 10 of the best bar exam-related tweets from before the test began. The tweets from Day 1 are a little more… aggressive. [Law.com]

  • Non-Sequiturs: 07.19.17
    Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 07.19.17

    * The Supreme Court’s latest ruling in the travel ban litigation: good news for grandparents, bad news for certain refugees. [How Appealing]

    * And in the travel ban battle, the parties aren’t pulling their punches. [Democracy in America / The Economist]

    * Nor does Joshua Matz: “The Supreme Court is now a co-owner and co-author of the travel ban.” [Take Care]

    * Justice Goodwin Liu and a team of Yale Law School researchers have issued an important new report about Asian Americans in the legal profession today. [The Portrait Project]

    * A defense of that controversial David Brooks column about salami. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

    * And a defense of due process when it comes to allegations of sexual assault on college campuses. [The Federalist via Instapundit]

    * In other higher-education news, here’s the tweet that got Nick Lutz suspended from the University of Central Florida. [Althouse]

    * How do millennials view the legal industry? Drew Rossow and Elan Fields discuss. [Legal Tookit / Legal Talk Network]