Neomi Rao

* Conviction sends Bitcoin boss from blockchain to chain gang. [Law360]

* Remember Popkin & Stern? Probably not since it collapsed in 1991. Its wild bankruptcy tale is finally coming to an end after art fights and marriage proposals. [Stltoday]

* Drug smugglers are now suing their lawyers for saying they knew Alex Acosta but failed to get an “Epstein deal.” This “Rule of Law” thing is not going well, folks. [Miami Herald]

* Effort to quash the House subpoena of Trump’s accountants heads to the DC Circuit today where new judge Neomi Rao will have an early opportunity to cook up some kooky ramblings to justify a purely political decision. [National Law Journal]

* Andrew Cuomo steps up to disenfranchise voters to shield his political stooges. [Sunnyside Post]

* Municipality hacks keep striking and it’s a real problem for everyone’s privacy. [Legaltech News]

* R. Kelly arrested on new charges. [Huffington Post]

* Where does Justice Brett Kavanaugh fit along the ideological spectrum at the Supreme Court? Adam Feldman evaluates the evidence thus far. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Speaking of SCOTUS, Frank Pasquale takes Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum’s new book, The Company They Keep: How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court (affiliate link), as a jumping-off point for exploring the political polarization of SCOTUS. [Balkinization]

* Texas v. Azar, the Obamacare case now pending before the Fifth Circuit, makes for unusual alliances — how often do you see Jonathan Adler, Nick Bagley, Abbe Gluck, and Ilya Somin on the same amicus brief? [Take Care]

* David Bernstein offers some thoughtful reflections — with which I happen to agree — on how some conservatives responded to the nominations of Neomi Rao and Jessie Liu. [Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]

* Joel Cohen has a question about Robert Mueller: “What did he know, and when did he know it?” [The Hill]

* And Cohen also has this interesting interview with Justice David Wecht of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, about an important (and disturbing) subject: the recent rise in anti-Semitism, in America and abroad. [Tablet]

* If you share my interest in litigation finance, then you might be interested in this great new resource: a comprehensive digital library of documents relating to the litigation-funding industry. [Litigation Finance Journal]

* What trends and technology will shape the future of the legal profession? Jean O’Grady discusses highlights from a new report by Wolters Kluwer. [Dewey B Strategic]

* Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows have referred Michael Cohen to the Justice Department, claiming that they have evidence that Trump’s former fixer “committed perjury and knowingly made false statements“ during his testimony before the House Oversight Committee. [CNN]

* Meanwhile, thanks to Cohen’s testimony, Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization who has already been granted immunity by SDNY prosecutors, will be called to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. [Daily Beast]

* Almost time to say hello to Judge Neomi Rao: The nominee to replace Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit got through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, and the full Senate is likely to vote her onto the bench. [NBC News]

* Lawrence Tu, the chief legal officer over at CBS, has resigned from his post and will be leaving the company in April. His leave follows the ouster of former CEO Les Moonves, who allegedly sexually harassed several employees. [New York Law Journal]

* Much to the Justice Department’s chagrin, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that not only may AT&T acquire Time Warner but that such a combination would be unlikely to harm competition. [Wall Street Journal]

* Ho Ka Terence Yung, the ex-UT Law student who pleaded guilty to terrorizing an admissions interviewer after he was rejected from Georgetown Law, was just sentenced to almost four years in prison for one count of cyberstalking. [Law.com]

* Lincoln Bandlow, a Fox Rothschild partner who some have referred to as a “porn copyright troll,” got sanctioned $750 by a federal judge after missing court deadlines in at least two dozen of those porn infringement cases. [American Lawyer]

* Irina Manta, a recent addition to the roster of Volokh Conspirators, assesses some of the attacks leveled against D.C. Circuit nominee Neomi Rao. [Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]

* In other nomination news, Thomas Jipping explains why conservatives should temper their excitement over those 44 judicial nominees who just got reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. [Bench Memos / National Review]

* Michael Dorf’s take on Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four liberals on the Supreme Court to put the Louisiana abortion law on hold: the right to an abortion is “not in quite as much immediate danger as one might have thought. And that’s not nothing.” [Take Care]

* Lawyer to the stars Alex Spiro, partner at Quinn Emanuel, talks about how he’s approaching the representation of his latest celebrity client, rapper 21 Savage. [Complex]

* On the occasion of his 15th blogiversary (congratulations!), Rick Garnett reflects on the past and future of blogging. [Mirror of Justice via PrawfsBlawg]

* Jean O’Grady chats with Pablo Arredondo of Casetext about the platform’s newest features. [Dewey B Strategic]

* And in other legal technology news, congrats to legal AI innovator Luminance on securing another $10 million in funding (reflecting a total valuation for the company of $100 million). [Artificial Lawyer]

* Last Thursday, Alabama executed Domineque Hakim Marcelle Ray and did not allow his imam to be present (even though Christian inmates can have the prison chaplain present) — a manifest injustice, according to Stephen Cooper. [Alabama Political Reporter]

* In the latest installment of his ongoing series offering advice to trial lawyers, David Berg sets forth an essential rule of cross-examination. [YouTube]

* Regarding the nomination of Patrick Bumatay to the Ninth Circuit, “Why are Democrats fighting the judicial nomination of a qualified gay minority?” Good question! [The Federalist]

* Speaking of highly qualified minority nominees under attack, Carrie Severino argues that it’s the critics of D.C. Circuit nominee Neomi Rao, not Rao herself, who are being inflammatory. [Bench Memos / National Review]

* And KC Johnson, reviewing the collegiate writings by Rao that have generated the attacks against her, argues that Rao’s views on campus sexual assault — from 25 years ago, so who knows whether or not she still holds them — are “align[ed] both with statute and today’s mainstream opinion.” [City Journal]

* Litigation over a watchdog commission for handling complaints of prosecutorial misconduct in New York State involves a lot of legal luminaries, including Jim Walden and Jacob Gardener of Walden Macht, Jim McGuire and Daniel Sullivan of Holwell Shuster & Goldberg, and Andrew Rossman, Kathleen Sullivan, and Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel. [New York Law Journal]

* Could Nick Sandmann and the Covington boys file libel lawsuits over some of the commentary on their controversy? It could be an uphill climb, according to Eugene Volokh (a First Amendment expert, and hardly anyone’s idea of a leftist). [Reason / Volokh Conspiracy]

* But if Covington cases do get filed, they could give rise to some interesting issues of civil procedure, as Howard Wasserman notes. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Many lessons can be learned from the Fyre Festival debacle — and one of the legal ones is that FTC disclosures actually matter. [All Rights Reserved]

* If you’re a liberal or progressive appellate litigator interested in taking on the Trump Administration, check out this new job posting from the good folks at the CAC. [Constitutional Accountability Center]

* Insiders say that President Donald Trump is expected to turn over his written responses to special counsel Robert Mueller’s questions about Russia’s interference with the 2016 election as soon as sometime this week. Ooooh boy, this should be fun. [Reuters]

* According to retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, the world’s culture is “becoming vulgar,” and it’s up to the United States to “show a culture, a discourse, a civil dialogue that’s enviable and admirable.” Yeah… good luck with that. [Washington Times]

* White House regulatory czar Neomi Rao has been nominated to fill Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s seat on the D.C. Circuit. In case you somehow missed it, Rao had a hand in the renaning of George Mason Law to ASS Law. Congrats! [National Law Journal]

* Remember Joel Sanders, the ex-CFO of Dewey & LeBoeuf? He says his “dire financial circumstances” prevent him from paying a $1M fine, but the Manhattan DA says he’s trying to commit “a fraud on [the] court.” [New York Law Journal]

* It’s not just Berkeley Law that’s trying to erase its association with a racist namesake. It’s just now being reported that Mercer Law School quietly removed segregationist and Southern Manifesto signatory Walter F. George’s name this summer. [13WMAZ]

* Stephen Scharf, film finance pioneer and co-chair of the Entertainment, Sports & Media Practice at O’Melveny & Myers, lost his battle with cancer. RIP. [THR, Esq.]