Tea Party

5th Circuit

Non-Sequiturs: 06.10.13

* The first rule of Insider Trading Club is, you do not send discoverable e-mails about Insider Trading Club. [Dealbreaker] * Arnold & Porter staged a mock Olympics last time around. Now we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop and we learn that the antitrust group was doping. [Washington Post] * Georgetown Law student Bindhu Parmathi crowned Miss District of Columbia! She will go on this September to participate in the Miss America pageant (aka “The pageant that Donald Trump doesn’t own). [The Examiner] * To recap: TSA took the stance that knives should be allowed on planes, but balked at fictional Jedi weapons. Yay America! [Lowering the Bar] * Illinois passes some of the strictest fracking regulations in the country. That’s a reference to hydraulic fracturing. Not just dropping Battlestar Galactica references. [Breaking Energy] * Indiana thinks it can discipline lawyers for criticizing a judge via private email. I would say that’s an insane misreading of the law, but I don’t want to get disciplined in Indiana, which sounds like the terrible prequel to Fifty Shades of Grey (affiliate link). [The Indiana Lawyer] * Five businessmen take off their pants to protest taxes. This is a bad precedent. I don’t want to see any of these Tea Party folks take off their pants. [TaxProf Blog] * Congrats to ATL reader Alicia Long, as well as co-author Jayne Jones, on publishing their new book Capitol Hell. [Amazon (affiliate links)] * The Judge Edith Jones incident should raise the national concern to improve diversity on the bench. But it won’t. [Judicial Clerk Review] * More follow-up on CBS’s improper campaign ad totally objective news documentary “Brooklyn D.A.” [New York Daily News] * If fans in the front row of your concert start holding out papers for you to grab, DON’T DO IT! Unless you want to get sued. Video after the jump, courtesy of Gawker…

By Joe Patrice
Biglaw

Morning Docket: 05.21.13

* Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Oklahoma. [CNN] * The IRS and the Treasury Department better watch out, because it seems that the “next logical step” for the tea party victims of heightened scrutiny leads right up the courthouse stairs. [ABC News] * #Whatshouldwecallme after advising on the $1.1 billion Yahoo/Tumblr deal? Kind of a big deal. The Biglaw firms doing the underlying legal work are Simpson Thatcher and Gunderson Dettmer. [Am Law Daily] * The Mirena MDL judge thinks female attorneys should be on the all-male executive committee. If this is “strategic gender placement,” the strategy is to look bad publicly. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight] * The Travers Smith trainee who was fired for getting pregnant is due in court this June to find out what type of compensation she’ll receive for being discriminated against by the firm. You go girl! [Daily Mail] * Wherein the parents of a 0L who’s got doubts about her employment prospects are counseled that she can “work not just in law.” ::facepalm:: [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report] * There’s trouble in paradise: lawyers in the Jodi Arias case unsuccessfully attempted to get a mistrial and withdraw from representation — for the second time — during its punishment phase. [Fox News]

By Staci Zaretsky
Biglaw

Morning Docket: 05.13.13

* Given the name and origins of the Tea Party movement, it actually makes perfect sense that their groups got grief from the IRS. [Washington Post] * Wachtell Lipton weighs in against the practice of shareholder activists offering special compensation to director nominees. [Dealbook / New York Times] * A law professor, Joshua Silverstein, argues that schools should embrace grade inflation. (But haven’t most of them done this already?) [WSJ Law Blog] * Facebook shareholders might not “like” this news, but Ted Ullyot is stepping down as general counsel after almost five years. We’ll have more on this later. [National Law Journal] * The Brooklyn DA’s office is reopening 50 murder cases that were worked on by retired detective Louis Scarcella (who looks oh-so-savory in the NYT’s photo of him). [New York Times] * In news that should shock no one, Nicholas Speath’s dubious discrimination case against Georgetown Law has been dismissed. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times] * Not long after leaving Cravath for Kirkland, Sarkis Jebejian is putting together billion-dollar deals for private-equity clients. [Am Law Daily] * Professor Jeffrey Rosen reviews an interesting new book, The Federalist Society (affiliate link), authored by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin. [New York Times]

By David Lat
Animal Law

Non-Sequiturs: 12.20.12

* It’d be easy to say “a former Tea Party candidate posted about assassinating the President.” But it’s probably more accurate to say a crazy, racist, loony person scrawled something naughty on Facebook and is now in trouble. [Huffington Post] * I’d like to buy this, and then use it to TP Herman Cain’s house […]

By Elie Mystal
Election 2012

Then, I Had To Defend Occupy Wall Street

When producers for the Mike Huckabee show on Fox called, Elie thought they were interested in his thoughts about what the Occupy Wall Street crowd was doing wrong. But no, they had a real live Tea Party organizer to handle that side of the argument. Instead, the producers wanted him to defend the OWS protesters. How did he do?

By Elie Mystal
American Bar Association / ABA

Non-Sequiturs: 08.04.11

* Is a Ropes & Gray attorney behind a shell company that gave $1 million to the Romney campaign? [The Docket / Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly] * Working on the matter pro bono, Skadden wants greater cooperation from the NYPD in the case of a missing eight-year-old boy. [WSJ Law Blog] * Breaking down the Alex […]

By Elie Mystal
Clarence Thomas

Mrs. Clarence Thomas Hosts Her Own Tea Party

When we’ve heard in the past about Virginia Lamp Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, it was usually as his fellow RV road warrior. But Ginni Thomas is now much more high-profile. The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that she has launched Liberty Central Inc., a conservative non-profit inspired by the Tea Party […]

By Kashmir Hill