Unsilent Partners (2)

Mike Semple Piggot has the lead essay at this week's Unsilent Partners; my response will be posted tomorrow morning. This time around, our topic is assisted suicide, prompted by Lord Falconer's recent proposal to amend the UK's suicide laws to prevent prosecution of those who accompany friends and relatives who've chosen to end their lives abroad. Although Falconer's amendment was defeated in the House of Lords, the topic will remain front-and-center, owing to the suicides of Sir Edward Downes and his wife at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland this week. We'll address existing laws in the UK and US and add our own thoughts about this difficult issue. Shortly, at his Charon QC site, Mike will interview Lord Falconer about his efforts. As always, your comments are very welcome at the Unsilent Partners site or via e-mail to either Mike (mike at unsilentpartners dot com) or myself (colin at unsilentpartners dot com).

UPDATE: My response is now posted, appended to Mike's earlier essay. Comment away!

There's No School Like Old School

Walter Olson's decade-old Overlawyered blog is, by most accounts, the original legal blog and is thus the forebear of not just Blawg Review but each and every blog collected in its weekly posts. It's fitting, then, to have Olson host Blawg Review #220 this week, marking his second go-around with hosting duties. This edition of the carnival of legal blogging is wide-ranging and highly-readable. Amongst the topics addressed are mobility during patriotic musical interludes at Yankee Stadium, unpersuasive administration spin on Judge Sotomayor's past professional practice, and Papal concern about intellectual property restrictions. H. Scott Leviant will host Blawg Review #221 at The Complex Litigator next Monday.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (227)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Yahoo! Rivals.com (from Wednesday, July 8; link good at time of posting):

It was assumed he was called "King James" because he reigns on the basketball court. But maybe LeBron James earned that nickname due to his tyrannical ways (in dealing with embarrassment).

On Monday, Jordan Crawford, a sophomore at Xavier (by way of Indiana), reportedly dunked on LeBron during a pick-up game at the LeBron James Skills Academy. Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com wrote that one high school player said, "it was bad" . . . .

LeBron must have agreed, because he had Nike officials confiscate the two videos that were taken of the dunk. (Parrish blames Nike, but reading between the lines it seems like the censorship was orchestrated by LeBron himself.)

. . . .

The Crawford dunk would have been a temporary embarrassment for LeBron. Let's say the video was put on YouTube. It blows up for a bit, dominates blogs for 36 hours, everyone has a good chuckle and then it's forgotten about.

But by censoring the tape, LeBron turns the dunk into a legend. On video, it's just a dunk. Without video, the jam can reach mythic proportions. Because nobody can see it, the story of the dunk will grow in stature with each telling. Today, it was a simple two-handed slam. In a few days, it will be a 360-degree windmill. By the time Crawford makes his Xavier debut in October, he will have jumped off LeBron's shoulders, flipped in the air, slammed the ball home with his left pinkie and then handed LeBron $3.99 for his dry cleaning.

[Previous TGIS]

Gmail Finally Walks Down the Aisle

Back in April 2005, I wrote a post called "Always a Beta, Never a Bride" which described the semi-permanent "beta" labels Google associates with many of its products. Gmail was a notable example, having been in beta at that point for a year (since April 2004).

Well folks, it's a beta no more, as of this morning. It's been widely discussed by technology blogs that Google is making this change to Gmail and to its other Google Apps products to make them more palatable to businesses. Okey-doke. Whatever. I'm just happy that I lived long enough to see this day.

Oddly, the Gmail product team has created a setting whereby users can revert the logo back to its old beta appearance. I suspect, however, that the only users who are that nostalgic for Gmail in beta are on the Gmail product team. Regardless, congratulations to them; I was a happy Gmail user when it was in beta and I'll continue to be a happy Gmail user from this point onward (without the beta logo setting, thanks very much).

Unsilent Partners

I'm pleased that Mike Semple Piggot, of Charon QC and Insite Law Magazine fame, has agreed to work together with me on a new project, Unsilent Partners. At Unsilent Partners, he and I will discuss legal, current, and other topics of interest to US and UK audiences, usually focusing on one topic per week.

The first entry is now up. In it, I discuss the 150-year sentence imposed on fallen financier Bernard Madoff:

It might be best to start this response with a few numbers. Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff is a spry seventy-one years young. He has just been sentenced to 150 years in a federal prison. Although our federal prisons do not offer parole as such, Señor Swindle is eligible for a sentence reduction of fifteen percent if he behaves himself. Essentially, if he doesn't riot, shiv anyone, or mix colors and whites in the prison laundry, he'll save himself twenty-three years in the funhouse. Thus, if he's patient, he'll be a free man sometime around his 198th birthday.

Will he make it out in time to celebrate his bicentennial? According to the CIA's World Factbook, the average life expectancy for an adult American man is approximately 75.65 years. Many pessimists have seized on this tidbit of information and concluded that Madoff's sentence means that he will never live to be released from prison. It's not like the CIA has ever been wrong about anything before, right? It should be noted, however, that these life expectancy statistics are for an average man and, as Judge Denny Chin noted in his sentencing remarks, Madoff is an extraordinary person. Let's dig a bit deeper and consider survival probability statistics as well. According to these numbers, it seems that as an American man aged seventy-one years, Madoff has a 46.7% chance of seeing his eightieth birthday and a 16.0% chance of making it to ninety. Most importantly, though, he has a 1.5% chance of living beyond 100 years old. Scoff if you will, but I think a 1.5% chance of making it to one's 198th birthday is nothing to sneeze at.

Assuming for purposes of our discussion that Judge Chin does not share my optimistic nature and expects that Madoff will not survive his sentence, what might have prompted his decision?

Please click through for, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. Mike will soon post his response and we both look forward to seeing your comments.

UPDATE: Mike's response is appended to my essay. He raises some good questions and I'll respond in the next day or so. Add your comments or feel free to e-mail either Mike (mikesp at unsilentpartners dot com) or me (colin at unsilentpartners dot com) with your thoughts.

Everything Old Is News Again

From the beginning, Blawg Review has encouraged its hosts to showcase their own professional and personal interests, to give some color and flavor to their posts. Some of the more notable and memorable posts in Blawg Review's long (by blogging standards) history have been idiosyncratic ones, personal in the most charming sense. So it is with this week's Blawg Review #219, hosted by Cathy Gellis at her Statements of Interest blog.

I had the pleasure of meeting Cathy several years ago at one of Professor Eric Goldman's meet-ups of Bay Area legal bloggers; at subsequent meet-ups and on Twitter, we've had a chance to talk some more and strengthen that casual acquaintance. One thing you learn very quickly about Cathy is that she is moderately fond of Huey Lewis and the News. As the continuum of Huey Lewis knowledge amongst my other friends runs from "Who?" to "I think I remember him," to "I once owned one of his cassettes," I can say without much fear of contradiction that she's by far the most dedicated Huey Lewis fan I know. She may be the most dedicated Huey Lewis fan he knows.

That dedication is on display in this week's lengthy Blawg Review, along with the best legal blogging of the past week. Highlights include posts from News namesakes (Bill, Sean, Mario, Chris, and Johnny, but it seems that there are no legal bloggers named Huey), posts about maintaining eligibility for Medicaid and dealing with the unpleasantness that is health coverage, and a post contemplating that life may be better after a big law firm lay-off.

Tune in next week when Walter Olson will host Blawg Review #220 at his venerable Overlawyered blog and detail his abiding love for 80s hair bands.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (226)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, July 1; link good at time of posting):

The sheriff of Oregon's most populous county has flunked his police certification course.

A passing score is an average of 75 on three written tests; Multnomah County Sheriff Bob Skipper got a 66, said Eriks Gabliks, deputy director of the state agency that certifies police officers.

Skipper, 70, will get another shot at the course in late August. If he fails a second time, he'll have to go through a 16-week cadet training program he had been trying to avoid.

. . . .

Skipper tried to get a waiver allowing him to take shorter refresher courses. When that failed, it appeared Skipper would have to head to the Salem academy to become perhaps the oldest police cadet in state history.

But the state Legislature rescued him last month, with an amendment narrowly tailored to Skipper's qualifications. The amendment allows the certification of a sheriff who has served at least 25 years as a police officer in Oregon, retired from law enforcement under honorable conditions, held state executive-level certification, served as elected sheriff for at least four years and is elected in a county where the sheriff's chief role is as an administrator.

But that waiver only applies if Skipper passes the written tests. Skipper said Wednesday he did not adequately prepare. "It's just a matter of me dropping the ball," he told The Oregonian.

Gabliks said about 40 people take the course each year, and Skipper is one of only a handful of people he can remember failing.

[Previous TGIS]

I've been waiting a long time for "Patience" to get bumped from a list of virtues.

When Peter Black hosted the Twitter-centric Blawg Review #178 in September 2008, the microblogging service was something of a novelty, and particularly so in the legal community. Since then, Twitter's user base has grown at an astonishing rate, 1,382% between 2008 and 2009 according to Nielsen Online. In the legal blogosphere also in the nine months since Blawg Review #178, Twitter has moved from the bleeding edge of technology to a spot a little further back on the blade. As a group, legal bloggers tend to be ahead of the curve; within that group, however, Twitter is mainstream enough that I would hazard a majority of us have considered it and made a decision to participate or not. In short, you don't hear many voices anymore in the blawgosphere asking "What's this 'Twitter' thing?"

It's a good time, then, for Blawg Review to revisit Twitter. This week's Blawg Review #218 host, Adrian Dayton, touches on the topic several times in the course of his virtues-themed post. He focuses in this Blawg Review, as in his forthcoming book, on twelve virtues which "will make our world a better place to live." Considering the prominence of Twitter in this week's edition of the carnival of legal blogging, perhaps "Brevity" is an unofficial thirteenth virtue!

Apart from Twitter-related musings, highlights of this week's issue include wondering whether we need the SCOTUS to tell us that strip-searching a 13-years-old is not OK, noting that offshoring legal work might have reached a tipping point, and finding one's passion in the practice of law or outside it. Cathy Gellis will host next week's Blawg Review #219 at her Statements of Interest blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (225) . . . The Sequel!

This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, June 24; link good at time of posting):

A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda as he spoke to journalists at a news conference on Wednesday.

Banda softly shouted: "You (monkey) have urinated on my jacket," and paused as he looked up to see the animal playing in a tree just above his chair.

"Perhaps these are blessings," he said continuing his address amid laughter from the audience of journalists and diplomats at the State House presidential offices.

[Previous TGIS]

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (225)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (via Venkat Balsubramani) (from Sunday, June 21; links good at time of posting):

A man who allegedly wanted to buy some marijuana was arrested after he mistakenly sent a text message to a Salem police officer, authorities said yesterday.

Cpl. Christopher Pew was off-duty when he received the message on his personal cell phone last week. Since he didn't know the person who had sent the text or whether it was a serious request, Pew agreed to meet the texter at a shopping center, and the person described what vehicle he would be driving.

That led to the arrests of John Milligan, 22, and Kelly Reilly, 20 . . . .

[Previous TGIS]

The Right Sort of Daddy Issues

Fathers' Day has always been more about quiet appreciation than applause and attention. If there's any defining characteristic of the American Fathers' Day, it's been relaxation. Dads are expected and encouraged to take it easy and enjoy a well-deserved day off. While that's certainly a concept I can get behind, this week's Blawg Review #217 host, Thomas Colson of the Securing Innovation blog, suggests that it can be something more.

Much as other holidays (the Martin Luther King holiday comes to mind) have of late become days to accomplish something in the spirit of the holiday rather than days of leisure, he describes how he uses Fathers' Day to improve himself as a father: "I made the decision to become more than a good father. I decided to become a great father to my children. I decided to become a mentor, life coach, and ally, providing them with tools and skills necessary to meet life’s challenges. And since I believe that success has a lot to do with planning, I decided to use Father's Day as my planning day. Since then, I have invested a few hours every Fathers’ Day building my Fatherhood Plan for the upcoming year; setting goals, tactical plans, and reviewing my successes from the previous year."

His planning has produced a series of children's books, a family of Mandarin Chinese speakers, and now a public speaking program for children. My Fathers' Day produced a neatly-cut lawn, a poorly-caulked shower, and a daughter who has mastered the first three levels of Monsters vs. Aliens on the Wii. Needless to say, I feel much shame.

Colson's post starts by reminding us of another recent Blawg Review, #209 hosted by John Hochfeder at his New York Injury Cases blog, which was a touching tribute to his father. From there, highlights include the "infinite" and possibly unconstitutional nature of the damages in the Jammie Thomas case, the pointlessness of British "anti-stab" knives, and a damaging ruling in the U.K. for anonymous bloggers ably covered by anonymous/psudonymous legal bloggers.

Adrian Dayton will host the next edition of Blawg Review at his Marketing Strategy and the Law blog next Monday.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (224)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, June 16; link good at time of posting):

After being told by her daughter that a man in their home was an armed intruder, a 77-year-old woman pulled a gun on him and sent him running, according to court documents. The Bangor Daily News reported that family members have been referring to Doris Gatchell of Princeton as "Annie Oakley" after she confronted the man Friday.

Suspect Dean T. Moore made his first appearance Monday in Washington County Superior Court.

The newspaper reported that he faces up to 30 years in jail and fines of up to $50,000 on each of the two most serious charges of burglary with a firearm and robbery.

[Previous TGIS]

A Blawg Review Host Deserving of the Royal "We".

I'll confess that I know little about the Magna Carta apart from the fact that it was a larger-caliber version of the original Carta, with improved penetration and stopping power. It seems that John Bolch knows a bit more about it than I do, which is fortunate since he's the one who's hosting the Magna Carta-themed Blawg Review #216 this week at the Family Lore blog.

This edition of the carnival of legal blogging is really more of a royal faire, replete with lords and ladies and more Middle Ages flavor than an evening at Medieval Times. Although my wife and daughter regularly address me as "My Lord", Bolch is the first outside my immediate family to do so. I like it. Once I'm through with this post, I'll circulate a memo around the office with some revised guidelines. But I digress.

Highlights of this edition include paring down the dirty tricks used in divorce to just ten, reconciling belt-tightening and work-life balance in Big Law, and considering whether naming names has a place in the blogosphere. The fine folks at the Securing Innovation blog will host Blawg Review #217. I might even suggest a few links if they'll promise to refer to me as "My Lord".

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (223)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Deadspin (from Wednesday, June 10; link good at time of posting):

Reebok belatedly discovers that they gave a shoe contract to [Marcin Gortat,] a white guy with an "Air Jordan" tattoo on his leg.

[Previous TGIS]

Enjoy some pun in the sun down by the seashore.

If nautical nonsense be something you wish, forego Spongebob this week and check out Blawg Review. Commemorating World Oceans Day, Carolyn Elefant hosts a pun-filled Blawg Review #215 at her My Shingle blog. Yes, I know that World Oceans Day was on Monday; I would've done something then, like perhaps write an introductory post for Blawg Review #215, but I was a bit underwater with professional and personal commitments. Highlights include a crackdown on fraudulent charities, law firm lessons from the collapse of GM, and deciding whether it helps or hurts to Get a Life. English family lawyer John Bolch hosts next week's Blawg Review #216 at his Family Lore blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (222)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Jerusalem Post via Joel Rosenberg (from day, June ; link good at time of posting):

A six-year-old girl helped put a knife-brandishing robber under arrest Tuesday night after the man had already successfully stolen money from two grown men.

The Dan District Police Station registered two complaints on Tuesday by apartment owners in Ramat Gan, saying a man threatened them with a knife and took money from them.

The 51-year-old robber, also a Ramat Gan resident, then moved on to a third apartment. After he knocked on the door, a little girl opened it. When he demanded she leave the house, she refused and said she would call the police. He then threatened her with a knife, but the child got hold of a broom and hit him with it.

The man fled the scene, but after the girl described his appearance to the police, he was caught and arrested while still in possession of the knife he had used in the robberies.

[Previous TGIS]

Smoke Yourself Fit with Blawg Review

The inimitable Charon QC hosts Blawg Review #214 this week. The occasion is the anniversary of the declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain. Not the first war, the American Revolution in the 1770s and 1780s, and not the most recent one, when Geeklawyer hosted Blawg Review #203 back in March. No, Charon references the often-overlooked War of 1812, which occurred sometime in the 1830s I think, and which prompted Francis Scott Key to pen the poem which was later set to music to become our national anthem, "Baby Got Back".

As Charon's work so often does, Blawg Review #214 ranges far from its ostensible origins, highlighting the mysterious art of Smokedo, which combines exercise and smoking to achieve an enlightened and enigmatic state of being wherein the practitioner is both more and less fit. If you thought the well-known Zen koan about the sound of one hand clapping was confusing, ask yourself about the improvement of cardio-vascular fitness with cigarettes. Yes, Charon covers it all this week, from the doings (or lack thereof) of the Slackoisie to the misdeeds of Britain's expensive members of Parliament, from dictators with something lacking to a lack of excuses for stealing legal blog content, and from the neverending debate over Twitter's and blogging's respective merits to negotiating one's way through legal troubles. There's extensive coverage of the Sotomayor nomination, of course, and even a quick tour of Ireland and Scotland thrown in for good measure.

Carolyn Elefant will host the next edition of the carnival of legal blogging next Monday at her My Shingle blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (221)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Inquisitr (from Wednesday, May 27; link good at time of posting):

Residents in Conisbrough, England have changed the name of their street after deciding that Butt Hole Road no longer appealed to them.

The name, despite its modern meaning, was given to the street hundred of years ago, and is named after a communal water butt.

Resident Peter Sutton told The Daily Mail that “he originally thought the street’s name would be fun - but admits he soon got tired of the jokes.” The paper also noted that the street had become a tourist attraction, particularly popular with Americans.

The street formerly known as Butt Hole Road is now known as the far less interesting Archers Lane.

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Blawg Review Throws in the Towel

Blessed are the geek: for they shall inherit the earth.

--Matthew 5:5 (Revised Internet Edition)

Memorial Day coincides this year with Towel Day. As Blawg Review #213 host Kevin Thompson points out, "Towel Day is also a memorial, but a geeky one," which arose after the untimely death -- er, "permanent existence failure" -- of Douglas Adams in 2001. Thompson helps the legal blogosphere get its geek on by explaining the universal significance of towels, drawing together the best legal blogging of the past week, and drawing a number of prominent former Blawg Review hosts out to pose with their towels. Highlights include grousing about lawyers' courtroom attire and grousing about that grousing, determining when legal ethics should prevent blogging a Supreme Court case, and realizing when not to ask a legal blogger to take down your photo from an unflattering post. Charon QC will host a return engagement next week. Until then, don't panic.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (220)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Canadian Press (from Monday, May 18; link good at time of posting):

The Belgian bodybuilding championship had to be cancelled after anti-doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled.
"I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again," said anti-doping official Hans Cooman. He said some bodybuilders just grabbed all their gear and ran off when he came into the room. Twenty bodybuilders were entered in the weekend competition.
"The sport has a history of doping and this incident didn't do its reputation any good," Cooman said.
Belgium's bodybuilding federation did not dispute the facts but said it could not explain why the competitors had suddenly rushed off.

[Previous TGIS]