Halbig v. Burwell

Non-Sequiturs: 12.17.14

* Rudolph sues for discrimination. This is why you should always let guys play in your reindeer games. [Bolek Besser Glesius LLC] * Congressional gridlock may call off... the Super Bowl? At least the Bears have other things to worry about than planning for the post-season. [Redline] * Hot damn, Keith Lee. "ABA 509 Matriculant Data On All Ranked Schools." That's... wow. [Associate's Mind] * The Senate torture report may be an ugly, but there's an argument that it hides a silver lining. [What About Clients?] * What isn't the D.C. Circuit doing today? [Constitutional Accountability Center] * Document reviewers may have known that emails weren't really private for years, but other professions understood the lack of true privacy much longer. [Law and More] * David is interviewed about Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link). [ABA Journal] * Bill O'Reilly invites on an "HLS student" -- who is also a conservative commentator -- to say a bunch of racial codewords under the guise of exam extensions. Look, I wouldn't ask for an exam extension if my leg were caught in a bear trap, but you know what? I couldn't care less if other people got extensions. Quit your whining (and appearing on TV) and go study for your own damn self! [Fox News]

Non-Sequiturs: 09.04.14

* Bob McDonnell, former governor of Virginia, guilty of 11 counts of corruption. Maureen McDonnell guilty of 8. If only they’d gotten that severance motion. [Wonkette] * The best way to catch drunk drivers is to give them something to crash into. [Legal Juice] * Chaumtoli Huq, a former general counsel to the New York […]

Non-Sequiturs: 08.21.14

* Judge John D. Bates wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee leadership “on behalf of the Judiciary” explaining why it’s important to keep FISA an opaque Star Chamber. Chief Judge Kozinsky, um, disagrees with that “on behalf” part, and calls out Judge Bates in this letter for mouthing off where he has absolutely no authority. [Just Security] * The twisted, contradictory, desperate logic behind Halbig. In GIF form!!! [Buzzfeed] * Two InfiLaw schools, Florida Coastal and our Twitter buddies at Charlotte, are offering refunds to students who perpetually fail the bar as well as a refund to students who don’t get clerkships or externships. That’s nice. A whole $10,000 for failing the bar twice and $2000 for not landing a position. Don’t bother comparing that too how much the students shelled out for their degrees because it’s too depressing. [JD Journal] * Do you want to know how to survive Biglaw? [2Civility] * Interesting advice on how to best take advantage of the more informal rules of mediation — let your clients build the narrative. [Katz Justice] * Judge gives a speech and suggests a woman should become a phone sex operator. That’ll work out well for him. [Journal Gazette] * Maybe we should be getting law degrees as undergrads? That way we might have minors that employers will care about. [Chronicle of Higher Education] * Geez, lots of judges in trouble today — here’s an elected judge accused of lying about where she lived to get elected. She denies it, but her filings list three different addresses. Oops. [Times-Picayune]

Non-Sequiturs: 08.12.14

* Intellectual property lawyer chastised for plagiarism. Repeatedly. As they say, it’s like O. Henry and Alanis Morissette had a baby and named it this exact scenario. [Retraction Watch] * Legislator blocks an award to a wrongfully convicted man who served 11 years in prison because he thinks the guy should just feel lucky that he got released. His reasoning will surprise you… mostly because he doesn’t really offer any. [The Arkansas Project] * Mike Spivey of Spivey Consulting is racing a 5K on Vail Mountain (at an elevation of 10,000 feet) as a fundraiser for Law School Transparency. Give your donations here. [Fundrazr] * The family of the woman who posed for the iconic advertising character Aunt Jemima have sued alleging that the pancake peddlers screwed the model out of her duly earned money. [TMZ] * A mystery woman has been sitting in an Ohio jail cell for weeks after trying to use false documents to get a driver’s license. Now it turns out that she’s a disgraced lawyer that we’ve heard of before…. [WINK News] * The seeds of Halbig were sown a really long time ago. It’s a wonderful window into how a cynical gang of people make their plans. [Constitutional Accountability Center] * Our friends from Aukland Law School that have given us parody videos of Royals and Blurred Lines have tackled House of Cards and adapted it to making your way into Biglaw. If you were wondering what a New Zealand accent impersonating Kevin Spacey impersonating a Southern accent would sound like, the video is after the jump…. [YouTube]

Liberal Critiques Of Challenges To Obamacare: 2 Errors Worth Correcting

What do liberal critics of Obamacare challengers get wrong?

Non-Sequiturs: 07.28.14

* Have you heard that Staci invited Justice Ginsburg to her wedding? [TIME] * The Fourth Circuit welcomes Virginia to the fold of marriage equality. [National Law Journal] * What might be the biggest insider trading case ever hinges on Greenberg Traurig. [New York Post] * Most exciting of all is that we may never need to hear the depressing “copyright-free” Happy Birthday song ever again. [boingboing] * With all the fire-breathing over the humanitarian crisis at the Mexican border, Texas Judge Clay Jenkins stands out for being reasonable. “I don’t feel like we have to solve the border crisis for a terrified child to be shown some compassion.” Why don’t we hear about more people like Judge Jenkins? This article suggests there’s a deeper problem with the media. [Dallas Observer] * I’ve been beating the drum that the Obamacare cases aren’t bound for SCOTUS because the D.C. Circuit will reverse Halbig en banc. The contrary view is that the Supreme Court may not let the lack of a real circuit split stand in its way. [Constitutional Accountability Center] * Outrage over the government’s school lunch health standards have Republicans fighting back at the state level. Remember, we need fatass kids because… freedom! [National Journal] * The Second Circuit approved antibiotics in animal feed for animals that aren’t even sick. Enjoy your superbugs! [Kitchenette / Jezebel] * Judge allegedly fell asleep during a child rape case. It’s not like it’s an important case or anything. [Gawker] * Gaming the rankings — not just for law schools any more. [The Kansas City Star] * Karen Mantler can’t afford her lawyer. And she’s singing about it. After the jump…. [WNYC Spinning On Air]

Non-Sequiturs: 07.25.14

* Proximate cause and the Incredible Hulk. Whatever, everyone knows Kirby was the real brains behind Palsgraf. [The Legal Geeks] * Someone is having fun with their RFAs: Admit… that we are going to whip the dog piss out of you. We were specifically chided: “please don’t say ‘only in Arkansas,’” so we won’t. You should feel free to say exactly that though. [Hawg Law Blog] * Not really surprising, but patent trolling is the worst it has ever been. I’ll sit here and wait for the New York Times to blame millennials. [io9] * The most important Supreme Court decision you’ve never heard of! Well, except I have heard of it. In fact, there was a year-long college debate topic about it. But it’s still important. [Washington Post] * What’s the appropriate sentence for having a dog off a leash? Confining the guy to a seven-county area? [LA Weekly] * Things to do in Denver when you’re a lawyer: allegedly scam a few million off a client. [Denver Post] * Meet the lawyer who came up with the quirky reading that got the D.C. Circuit to temporarily derail Obamacare. [Wall Street Journal] * Meanwhile, this title says it all about Halbig: “Well, Conjecture, Tendentious Misreadings, and Cherry Picking Are Kinds of Evidence.” Pour a little out for Lionel Hutz. [Lawyers, Guns & Money] * Everyday we (the ABA) hustlin’. [Law and More]

Non-Sequiturs: 07.24.14

* Have you all called the Breaking Bad law firm number yet? Because it works, so go for it! [Legal Cheek] * How to make airlines more profitable: make everyone sit on bicycle seats! [Lowering the Bar] * Ilya Somin explains why the D.C. Circuit’s interpretation in Halbig isn’t absurd. And it’s not absurd. It just reflects the hilariously cynical conservative opposition to giving their own citizens tax breaks. [The Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post] * Ohio State fired its band director amid sexual harassment allegations. To fire a guy, Ohio State must have dotted every “i” in this investigation. [USA Today] * Speaking of sexual harassment, the Navy’s Blue Angels are the subject of a sexual harassment suit. And somehow it involves a blue and gold penis seen from space. [Slate] * The Chevron battle over Ecuador continues. Turns out the star witness Chevron paid upwards of $1 million to testify took 50 days of prep to finally get his ever-shifting story straight. [Huffington Post] * There’s a new book out called Kate’s Escape from the Billable Hour (affiliate link). We haven’t read it, but apparently this tale of “a burnt-out, second-year attorney working in the dysfunctional world of Big Law” mentions ATL. So they definitely did their research. [Amazon] * Watch a drunk guy give cops a lesson in Con Law. Video after the jump…. [Barstool Sports]

Is The Death Penalty Worth It?

Can we stomach the splatter? Conservative columnist Tamara Tabo argues that the death penalty isn't worth defending.