State Department

It's hard to understand why this would be a priority for the State Department.

If I didn't know better, I'd say the administration enjoys getting sued and losing.

* An off-duty African-American police officer responded to gunfire heard from his apartment by grabbing his service weapon and heading out to assist his fellow officers. How do you think this blurb is going to end? If you answered “I don’t have enough facts yet to know the outcome,” you are an idiot or a child. If you answered “the white officers shot him,” you are right, of course. If you answered, “the white officers detained him, realized their mistake, released him, and then a late arriving officer shot him, and the police lied about it for a day until a newspaper reported out the story,” then you somehow knew that this went down in St. Louis. [New York Daily News]

* The Fifth Circuit lifted a ban on a bill that will allow Mississippi to discriminate against the gay community. Story time: I saw this story in Morning Docket, and just now tried to Google it for comment in this column. I couldn’t remember the exact details, so I just typed in “Mississippi gay bashing bill.” Couldn’t find what I was looking for. I thought a little and then tried “Mississippi religious freedom law,” boom, Google gave me all the links. Here’s the thing: I refuse to use the language of the oppressors. This bill is not about religious freedom, it’s about gay bashing. I’m going to call it as such, I’m going to tag it as such, and I hope others will join me in reserving “religious freedom” for worshipers while telling bigots exactly what they are. [USA Today]

* Undercover police officer handcuffs three teenagers on the National Mall for… selling water without a permit. The kids were black, of course. At this point, I’m pretty sure a police officer could be dying of thirst and I could have an entire river sloshing around in my backpack and I wouldn’t tip it out so that the officer could lick the water off of my foot. BECAUSE IF I REACHED FOR THE WATER THE DESICCATED OFFICER WOULD STILL SHOOT ME AND SAY HE THOUGHT I WAS GOING FOR A GUN. [U.S. News]

* Recipients of the prestigious Rangel and Pickering fellowships, aimed at helping minority applicants get started at the State Department, have been told by Trump’s State Department that only temporary, non-career positions are available to them this year. I think I’m okay with that, insofar as I don’t want any foreigner thinking that non-white Americans have a lot to do with this embarrassment of a country. We just work here. [Independent]

* I’ve got to do some plugs in a second, so my editorial sense tells me I should link to something funny to lighten the mood. Here’s a story about a world-famous comedian who will be touring America, town-hall style, to raise awareness about sexual assault. [NPR]

* Join David Lat for a happy hour — and Supreme Court talk — in Minneapolis on Monday. [Federalist Society Events]

* I was on the Brian Lehrer Show again, this time with Kai Wright, and I broke down like seven Supreme Court cases in half an hour, including basically wetting myself when they let me lead with REAL PROPERTY in the form of the Murr v. Wisconsin decision. [Brian Lehrer Show]

* Time to check in with the Alt-Right. Breitbart has an explosive report claiming that Trump officials are quietly instructing schools to call boys and girls the pronouns of their choice. “Education Officials Quietly Push Transgender Ideology Onto Schools.” It’s their second most commented on story, behind a Nancy Pelosi hit job. “The deplorables didn’t vote for this LGBTQLMFAO nonsense. Trump wasn’t elected to continue ovomits LGBTQLMFAO PCBS legacy, Trump was elected to End it.” Calling schoolchildren something that makes them feel comfortable and accepted = “Ovomits LGBTQLMFAO PCBS legacy.” I will never give in to these people, and I don’t care how many pollsters, spinsters, or allies tell me I have to in order to “win”. [Breitbart]

The senior management at the U.S. State Department has seen enough in these six days to make their call.

Ed. note: As mentioned on Wednesday, we will be publishing today, but at a reduced level. We’ll be back in full force on Monday. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

* President-elect Donald Trump will likely pick a lawyer as his nominee for Secretary of State: Rudy Giuliani (NYU Law ’68) or Mitt Romney (Harvard Law ’75). [New York Times]

* Where do broken hearts go? Some precedents for Chief Judge Merrick Garland to follow from unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. [Associated Press via How Appealing]

* A pre-Thanksgiving ruling from the Florida Supreme Court that gave one prisoner something to be grateful for could signal more upheaval to come in the nation’s second largest death row. [BuzzFeed]

* Three more judges participated in Pennsylvania’s “Porngate” email exchanges — but it seems that Bruce Beemer, the state’s new attorney general, won’t be naming names. [ABA Journal]

* What does the future hold for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its chief, Chicago Law grad and former SCOTUS clerk Richard Cordray? [New York Times]

* It’s not just a plot line from Suits: Reginald Taylor, accused of posing as a lawyer by stealing an attorney’s bar number, apparently delivered decent results for his clients. [The Daily Beast]

* Don’t mess with (federal judges from) Texas, Mr. President; Judge Amos Mazzant, who blocked President Obama’s proposed extension of overtime pay, isn’t the first Lone Star jurist to cause problems for the Obama Administration. [New York Times via How Appealing]

* Thinking of hitting the movies over the long weekend? Tony Mauro shares our own Harry Graff’s enthusiasm for Loving. [National Law Journal]

* “Our goal will be to be as transparent as possible about our results, while complying with our various legal obligations.” The Justice Department may have chosen not to bring charges against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but that didn’t stop the State Department from reopening its investigation into her email scandal just one day later. [Associated Press]

* Has the Roberts Court turned liberal? Not really, says Linda Greenhouse. Considering that “today’s conservative justices are a good deal more conservative than the liberal justices are liberal,” the results of the high court’s last two blockbuster cases were really about righting wrongs that flew in the face of existing laws. [New York Times]

* This month, Risa Goluboff, the first woman to ever serve at the helm of UVA Law, began her stint as dean, and a great number of the burning questions that she was asked in this interview relate to work/life balance. Perhaps the next time another man is named dean at a law school, he’ll have to answer similar questions. [Big Law Business]

* A judge has ruled that Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial may proceed over the objections of his lawyers, who were apparently upset they weren’t able to cross-examine Andrea Constand, the comedian’s accuser, during a preliminary hearing earlier this year. “It’s our position we’re not going to re-traumatize victims,” said a prosecutor. [NBC News]

* Arthur Olick, bankruptcy pioneer and Anderson Kill partner, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

It is quite an odd scenario when your 12-month outlook contains the following possibilities: criminal charges and potential imprisonment, or holding the nation's highest office. Such is the fate of Hillary Clinton.

"Have it by next week. Have it by next week when we have our hearing. Do you hear me?"

Legal technology columnist Jeff Bennion takes the controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails and uses it to examine important issues in e-discovery.

* The Thomas M. Cooley Law School is planning to sell one of its academic buildings for an asking price of $8.15 million. Dear Lord, the school will lose some of its library square footage. NOOOOOOOOO! [Lansing State Journal]

* Contrary to his client’s hit anthem, Pharrell’s lawyer isn’t happy. He says YouTube has been “blithely” ignoring his requests to take down music for which it lacks performance rights, and it may result in a $1B lawsuit. [Hollywood Reporter]

* Clifford Sloan, the State Department’s special envoy on Guantánamo Bay, appointed in 2013 to help shut down the detention center, is returning to the loving arms of Skadden’s partnership on January 1, 2015. Gitmo is still open. Oops. [Am Law Daily]

* After 30 years, the Food and Drug Administration decided to lift its lifetime ban on blood donation for gay men. Now gay men just have to abstain from doing gay things for a year — like having sex with other men — to donate blood. Yay? [WSJ Law Blog]

* If you’ve been wondering what the most ridiculous lawsuits of 2014 are, we’ve got you covered. These are the top 10 most absurd cases filed over the course of the past year. You may remember some of these from our coverage. [Faces of Lawsuit Abuse]

A prominent accuser of Jonny Dach turns out to have a prostitution problem of his own.

Is Yale Law School graduate Jonny Dach getting a bum rap?

* So now, officially, more people have lost their jobs over Benghazi than lost their jobs over 9/11. [New York Times] * Could we sue the NRA out of existence? [Dissident Voice] * Nate Silver makes it clear that gun ownership is a great indication of party affiliation. Guess the liberals would get their asses handed to them in a civil war. [Five Thirty Eight / New York Times] * Should it be harder for a teenager to get his hands on a video game with lots of guns in it, or AN ACTUAL FREAKING GUN? [Huffington Post] * “Fun” law bloggers interview each other, for fun. [Allison Leotta] * Wait, McDonald’s restaurants in Europe have waitresses? [Telegraph] * Former Governor of Florida slams current Governor of Florida while nation wonders why Florida is always such a train wreck. [Blog of the Legal Times] * Bank robbers hail getaway cab. [Chicago Tribune] * Look, the quote of the year is Megyn Kelly’s, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?” But here are some other fun ones from 2012. [The Careerist]

* “To do nothing in the face of pending disaster is to be complicit. It’s time to act. It’s time to vote.” What a convenient time to discover that the Department of Justice tabled new gun control proposals in favor of an upcoming election campaign. [New York Times]

* Rumor has it that the president will nominate Senator John Kerry to be secretary of state for his second term. Upon hearing the news, Hillary Clinton updated her Tumblr page before she caught a case of the vapors, fainted, and got herself all concussed. [CNN]

* “If you don’t know, then you have to plan for the worst.” Everyone’s pissed off about the possibility of being pushed off the fiscal cliff, but on the bright side, it’s creating a mountain of billables. [National Law Journal]

* Remember the judge who resigned after he accidentally showed a colleague a picture of the “judicial penis”? He was removed from office by a judicial ethics panel. How very effective. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

* And for the talent portion of the competition, Alicia Guastaferro, the pageant princess who was picked up for prostitution after getting caught with an attorney, will have her hooking charges dropped. [Huffington Post]

* “The people who are paying us say this is what we want.” When it comes to cross-border mergers, law firms aren’t becoming behemoths for the hell of it. The end goal is to be able to edge out the rest of the competition. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* It’s been six weeks since Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, and “[e]verybody wants to go back downtown,” but some Biglaw firms in New York City — firms like Harris Beach and Cahill Gordon — are still stuck in their temporary offices. [New York Law Journal]

* Following Jeh Johnson’s adieu to the DoD, drone-loving Harold Koh will be packing up his office at the State Department and returning to Yale Law to resume his professorship next month. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector is employing 5,800 more people than it was at this time last year. We’d be in good shape if 40,000 people hadn’t graduated law school in May. [Am Law Daily]

* Another day, another wrist slap: Villanova Law has been placed on probation for by the Association of American Law Schools over its grade-inflation scandal. Does that even mean anything? [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* The Lanier Law Firm, known for its spectacular Christmas parties, hosted some country superstars at this year’s event. Guess we know where Faith Hill and Tim McGraw go for legal assistance. [Houston Chronicle]

* A slim majority of American adults think that federal government employees should just sit back, relax, and smoke a bowl instead of enforcing federal laws against marijuana use. [FiveThirtyEight / New York Times]

* “I’m sorry they are confused in the White House.” Puerto Rico’s statehood referendum received a majority of votes, but lawmakers say the results of the two-part plebiscite are too confusing to add a 51st state. [CNN]

A former Supreme Court clerk, currently President Obama's nominee to serve as ambassador to Iraq, finds his personal life under scrutiny thanks to some racy leaked emails. How racy?

One of [my handlers during my confirmation process] said, ‘You know, you might want to apologize for some of the things you wrote.’ I said to him, ‘Can we get one thing straight? I am not apologizing.’ I’ve lived the life I’ve wanted to live. I’ve said the things I’ve wanted to say. If you […]

As we mentioned yesterday, a student at Emory Law School by the name of Ilan Chaim Grapel was arrested in Egypt on Sunday, and ordered held for 15 days. The Egyptians allege that Grapel is a “highly trained” spy, working for the state of Israel. Ilan Grapel is a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen. And he did […]

At this year’s Emory Law School commencement, Professor Sara Stadler urged graduates to think outside the box with respect to their career options: “You might not be able to land that [top-choice] job…. You might have to move to Nebraska.… You might have to join a small firm where they don’t make the big bucks.” […]

WikiLeaks worships at the shrine of rabid transparency. And it does not just sacrifice government documents to the transparency gods; founder Julian Assange tells my Forbes colleague Andy Greenberg that corporate America is the site’s next big target. A big bank is going down, says Assange. Greenberg thinks it might be Bank of America. Dealbreaker […]