December 2009
21 posts
Obama continues to struggle with leadership...
President Obama is taking heavy criticism for his bizarre actions, and those of other members of his administration, following the attempted terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines flight several days ago, this from the New York Daily News:
The attempt to blow Northwest Flight 253 out of the air was planned as an attack on the United States and very nearly succeeded in accomplishing that...
Feeling old
Just reading a blog that shall remain nameless, and came upon the following exchange:
xxxFan December 29, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Those rotary phones look quite fun. I still don’t get how to use them though.
yyy December 29, 2009 at 6:48 pm
put ur finger in the number then scroll it all the way to the (counter clockwise i think) end. Do that for every number… I never see it as that big of a...
Death of the newspaper (and, oh yeah, the mall...
Powerful article on Mediate about the decline and fall of the newspaper industry and the mall during the Aughts, and why the two are linked:
The blossoming of the Internet in the Aughts, a time of political and economic instability, has hastened (though not completed) the demise of many cultural components tangential to its core functionality. The slow sublimation of newspapers is understood to...
Fortune favors the brave...
This is an excellent - if short - expose at the Work Matters blog on one of the legal industry’s ailments: a failure of courage in the practice of law. Here’s a bit of it:
As lawyers, we often do — not what is needed — but what others cannot criticize: We take the unneeded deposition, file the meritless motion, pile on the repetitive witness.
I see lawyers making their lives and...
Another ding in the public trust...
The big story today: Senator Max Baucus of Montana apparently nominated his girlfriend for a United States Attorney position last March. Here are some juicy details from the New York Times today - which, strangely, isn’t featuring this story at the top of its site “above the fold”:
The girlfriend, Melodee Hanes, worked for Mr. Baucus as his state office director and as a field...
Gifts for lawyers...
Here are three good ones.
Or, you could try giving yourself the gift of happiness in 2010, or even a pizza place.
Here’s an idea: give yourself new partners for the new year!
For your peers tasked with end of year collections, you could give them a Pulling Teeth metal sculpture.
Whatever you do, though, don’t give yourself your clients’ money.
Happy holidays!
Our vital national interest
I’m pretty sure Michael Moore and I are not of the same species - I just don’t see how it’s possible. Here are some of Moore’s profound words of wisdom for President Obama, written prior to his speech last night announcing a large increase of United States troops to Afghanistan:
Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will...
Imagine if this guy put his powers to good use...
Scott Rothstein, of the now defunct Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler firm in Miami, Florida, accused of orchestrating a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, ”appeared nonchalant as he stood in handcuffs and leg restraints before U.S. Magistrate Robin Rosenbaum, who ordered him held without bail because he is a flight risk.”
Some of the gruesome details of Mr. Rothstein’s alleged scheme are...
Everything is relative I guess...
From a piece in the New York Post today, much gnashing of teeth and ranting and raving about Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippmann’s apparent end run on a judicial pay raise:
As The Post’s James Fanelli reported Sunday, last month he doubled, by diktat, state judges’ annual expense allowances, from $5,000 to $10,000 — an unauthorized de facto pay hike.
Most...
