An Interesting Pseudo-Law Firm SEO Site

I stumbled across a site called casedetails.com, which claims to be by somebody who has an interest in law firm SEO issues. The post, "Is Traditional SEO Dead" raises issues I have not seen on the blogs and sites of people who market themselves as law firm SEO specialists. The post suggests how difficult it can be to launch a new website, due to the evolution of the Internet and how search engines now treat new websites. It ends somewhat optimistically,

Traditional SEO may be dead, but it has been replaced by more traditional marketing ideas like i) offering visitors quality content they can use; ii) building of brand reputation & authority; and iii) the importance of developing an ongoing relationship with site visitors.

Yes, but.... great content of itself doesn't guarantee visitors any more, so with most sites a lot of the marketing and public relations effort needs to occur outside of the realm of search engines, to build interest, traffic and links which will ideally increase the site's importance and credibility as perceived by search engine algorithms. With most sites, that won't be easy.

The site itself reflects how SEO rules can change faster than even SEO professionals can keep up with them. Another post describes how search engines give better treatment to sites where the content appears at a higher location in the html code. This seemed to be true for a while, but no longer appears to be a significant factor. (Still, if you can do it, have your web designer rework your pages for clean code, a minimum of tables, use of CSS, and text instead of graphic links for navigation.) It is worth noting that the content on the casedetails.com website starts at line 186.

A quick note on things not always being what they appear: There's nothing on this site, other than perhaps the site owner's reluctance to identify himself, which shouts out "This guy isn't really a law firm SEO professional." He even critiques some law firm websites. So why am I skeptical? Well, the failure of the owner to clearly identify himself is a factor, as is the failure to provide any business contact information or details. The feedburner links are spammy. And the site owner describes himself as having interest in "hotel reservation/travel directory sites" - which he correctly notes are particularly challenging to place in search engines, but also are more consistent with somebody who is into marketing his own affiliate link-based sites as opposed to other people's websites. (Want to bet that that this is the same guy?)

Don't get me wrong - if I found an SEO who could effectively launch a travel affiliate website and get it to the top three search results on Google for a hot search term such as "New York hotel" or "cheap ticket", while using a long-term strategy and only "white hat" SEO techniques (those which search engines view, and are likely to continue to view, as appropriate and ethical), I would very much consider using that SEO to promote a law firm site. I'm just suggesting that with any SEO, before you hire, check under the hood and kick the tires. And if you hear somebody describe the hard and fast rules of SEO (a mistake this guy does not make), consider the probability that the person either doesn't understand SEO or stopped following search engine developments several years ago.

No, What He Said Was....

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, the host is relentless in his flyspecking of Slate's Bushisms. (I have no real interest in reading the Bushisms themselves, let alone Prof. Volokh's dissections.) Perhaps, though, Prof. Volokh should stop worrying about what is happening in other online publications, and start looking at his own. As Prof. Volokh often notes, the Bushisms are meant as humor. This post by the relentlessly partisan Jonathan Adler was not:

How should one interpret Gore's statement that it is "appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is." Is this a call for environmental activists to exaggerate or stretch the truth? Or merely an argument for emphasizing certain facts? I'd be curious what readers think.

How about the possibility that he meant exactly what he said - that it is appropriate to keep hammering the facts because the issue is so important?

Adler defends his motives,

UPDATE: Some commenters below speculate about my motives for this post. Contrary to the suggestion of Kieran and some of the others, this was not an effort to ridicule or disparage Gore — various selections from his book or earlier interviews would have better served that purpose. I was pointed to the quote by someone who thought that it was quite damning. Unconvinced, I was curious to see what readers of this blog made of the quote when presented in context.

That's the sort of defense that, in my opinion, should be annotated with "[Bats eyes innocently]". (Crediting mythago for her many amusing uses of that particular annotation.)

Giving Away or Selling a Computer

If you ever give away or sell a computer, be sure to take all of your files off of the hard drive. Why? Let's ask this guy.

Thanks to David Brooks, It All Makes Sense Now

The wealthy of our society are able to hire nannies, who can love their children and teach them how to resist the temptation of marshmallows before the age of three. Children of privilege, having both the love of an nanny and the power of self-distraction inculcated within them by the age of three, will be all-but-guaranteed that a suitable personality in high school, and success in their future lives. Unfortunately, this may leave the nanny too busy for her own children, who will succumb to the temptation of marshmallows and thus fail to achieve the American dream. Because, darn it all, good child care is just too expensive to provide to people who can't afford to pay for it themselves.

When you turn your attention to human capital formation, you begin by thinking about job training and schools. But you discover that while learning is like nutrition (you have to do it every day), earlier is better. That's because, as James Heckman puts it, learners learn and skill begets skill. Children who've developed good brain functions by age 3 have advantages that accumulate through life.

* * *

Getting this right is tricky. Head Start produces only modest benefits, as a study from the Department of Health and Human Services has reminded us again. Small, intensive preschool programs yield tremendous results, but realistically, they cannot be done on a giant scale.

* * *

If there's one thing that leaps out of all the brain literature, it is that, as Daniel J. Siegel puts it, "emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain." Kids learn from people they love. If we want young people to develop the social and self-regulating skills they need to thrive, we need to establish stable long-term relationships between love-hungry children and love-providing adults.

To the extent that Brooks wishes to argue that he's talking about love and not money, in recognizing the growing stratification of wealth in this nation he implicitly acknowledges that children of the very wealthy who rely upon people outside of the family to raise their children manage to do so with sufficient amounts of "love". Perhaps he means to say that love isn't really enough, and that children need the sort of emotional security that he does not believe the poor are capable of providing (or buying), save perhaps when working as child care providers and nannies. (But that's not what he says.)

The proposed solution appears to be to throw your hands up in the air in despair, and walk away from the problem.

It Took Them This Long To Figure It Out?

The egg came first, of course.

Getting To Know George Galloway

A few months ago, George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens were on Bill Maher's HBO show. Following some of Hitchens' trademark invective, this rather unimpressive exchange followed,

GALLOWAY : You have a rather unhealthy personal obsession with me. Can we talk about the issue instead of me?

HITCHENS: It's unhealthy – it's unhealthy to have to consider, Mr. Galloway, if you put it like that.

GALLOWAY : Nobody here even knows me. Why don't we talk about bin Laden? And talk about Al Qaeda; talk about issues.

HITCHENS: We're not going to talk about him as if he's our fault, Mr. Galloway, however slimily you put it.

GALLOWAY: You're a United States man now?

HITCHENS: We're not going to blame him for -

GALLOWAY : I thought you were here as a Brit.

HITCHENS: - we're not going to blame ourselves for -

MAHER: I love it when the British fight. [laughter] [applause]

KAY: But you still have -

HITCHENS: There's nothing British about -

MAHER: There's only one better fight, and that's a chick fight. I think we all know that.

HITCHENS: There's nothing British about Mr. Galloway. He's a fifth-column run from the Middle East in British politics.

MAHER: Wow.

While Hitchens could have fared better in that particular meeting of the minds, and by all reasonable measures should have fared better, it seems implicit within Galloway's comment, "Nobody here even knows me," that to know him is not necessarily to like him. He's right.

Prohibiting Bilingual Ballots

George Will's latest column, A Vote For English, advocates against bilingual ballots for U.S. elections. He sneers at Alberto Gonzales, who has the temerity to disagree with him on this issue:

The federal government's chief law enforcement official may need a refresher course on federal law pertaining to legal immigrants.

Will points out that in order to be naturalized, the law requires that you "demonstrate an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write, and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language." To Will, this means that any person who cannot understand a Ballot that is written in English should not have been allowed to become a citizen. And to Will it inexorably follows that ballots should only be in English, apparently such that voting privileges are reserved to those who "can comprehend the political discourse that precedes the casting of ballot".

Okay... But Will has forgotten a few things. First, not everybody who has weak English language skills is an immigrant. Will may not like this fact, but not every person born in the United States grows up in an English-speaking household. Second, not every election requires that you be a citizen to vote. Some local elections, such as Chicago school board elections, do not require citizenship for participation. Third, communities with large populations of non-English speakers may end up with bilingual ballots even in the abence of a legal mandate as, despite the possibility of Will's disapproval, voters may demand them. The effect of English-only ballots would be felt most significantly by citizens who do not have sufficient political clout to successfully lobby for ballots in their language, which would seem to have the opposite effect of bringing marginalized people into the nation's "political discourse". Fourth, ballots may be available in English, but that English isn't always easy to understand even to a native speaker. Fifth, even if a citizen has weak English language skills, if that citizen is going to vote anyway, isn't it better for everybody else in the country that the citizen understand the ballot?

Oh, but if only we could live in an ideal world, where everybody wears neatly pressed suits, speaks fluent Englsh, and writes for the Washington Post.

As I have previously noted, George Will is preternaturally unable to make even a slight criticism of a Republican without savaging a Democrat. No exception here.

It takes political bravery to propose pruning the Voting Rights Act, given the predictable charges of racism that are hurled so promiscuously nowadays. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, for example, has a liberal's reflex for discerning racism everywhere and for shouting "racist" as a substitute for argument

Demonstrating his firm grasp of the English language, Will asserts the narrowest possible construction of the term "race" and "racism":

Was his opaque idea - well, perhaps it is not opaque to liberals - of unintentional racism merely a bow to Senate rules against personal slurs? What "race" does Reid think is being victimized? Are Spanish speakers members of a single race?

A more astute follower of the nation's civic conversation might recognize that the term "racism" is frequently used in contexts where the speaker is actually referencing "bigotry". Which is not to say that Will doesn't have a point buried in his vituperation. After all, you shouldn't attribute to evil that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Or, in the case of Congress, political opportunism.

Why Americans Have More Children?

Robert Samuelson takes on the so-called "birth dearth" today, changing horses in midstream. First relying upon the work of Ben Wattenberg, Samuelson states,

Up to a point, we understand plunging fertility rates. Wattenberg reviews the usual suspects: improved incomes; health and life expectancies (as more children survive, parents have fewer babies); growing urbanization (families need fewer children to work the fields); women's access to education and jobs; contraception; later and fewer marriages; more divorces. But our understanding is only partial, because there's one big exception to low fertility rates: the United States.

It would have been interesting, had Samuelson presented some of the socio-economic data apparently considered by Wattenberg, but instead he tells us:

American fertility is roughly at the replacement rate, 2.1 children per woman. Nor does the U.S. rate merely reflect, as some think, a higher rate among Hispanic Americans. The fertility rate is 1.9 for non-Hispanic whites and about 2 for African Americans, reports demographer Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. What explains the American exception? Eberstadt cites three differences with Europe and most other advanced countries: greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values. There's some supporting evidence. A survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked respondents in 33 countries to react to this statement: "I would rather be a citizen of [my country] than of any other." Among Americans, 75 percent "strongly" agreed; among Germans, French and Spanish, comparable responses were 21 percent, 34 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

That's the best he can do to support the thesis of "greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values" resulting in higher birth rates?

Now there is no real dispute that U.S. birthrates are declining along with those of the rest of the developed world - they're just declining a bit more slowly. Looking at Samuelson's data, you can see that he places the birth rates for both African Americans and non-Hispanic whites as below the replacement rate. While he suggests that the U.S. fertility rate isn't merely due to the birth rates of non-Hispanic whites, which I understand to be approximately 2.7 children per woman, there is little question but that birth rates among that demographic do help boost the overall fertility figure to the approximate replacement rate.

Samuelson, of course, provides no explanation as to why Hispanics have greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values than non-Hispanic whites. Nor, for that matter, does he explain why African Americans also have greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values.

My guess is that if he had stuck with Wattenberg's analysis, Samuelson might have found some interesting socio-economic and immigration-related fertility statistics which could explain U.S. birth rates. I haven't been able to find birth rates by socio-economic group, but it is my understanding that lower SES populations have higher birth rates than higher SES populations. It is also my understanding that immigrants from developing nations have higher birth rates than non-immigrants. Further, I understand that larger families are more likely to occur in rural communities than among city dwellers - it's more expensive to raise kids in a city. Of course, Samuelson might accept all of that but nonetheless argue that being an impoverished immigrant, particularly in a rural community, leads to greater optimism, greater patriotism and stronger religious values....

But perhaps he would instead take a step back from his advocacy for a wall on the Mexican border, and realize that the population statistics he seems to believe will keep us more vibrant and competitive than Europe arise in no small part from immigration.

The Democrats and Iraq

On a superficial level, Jackson Diehl makes some good points in his column, "Reclaiming the Democratic Agenda" - although the headline foreshadows its weaknesses. Diehl suggests that the Democrats should embrace an agenda to "win" in Iraq. Describing a book which outlines a possible agenda to bring some meaningful reform to the Middle East, Diehl laments,

Unfortunately, Pollack and his fellow Democrats acknowledge, no liberal policy in the Middle East will work if Iraq fails.

No liberal policy? Even having acknowledged "Bush's cynical policy of demanding democracy from enemy regimes such as Iran and Syria while tolerating the continued autocracy of such friends as Egypt and Saudi Arabia", Diehl provides no explanation for what type of policy (liberal, conservative, or other) would succeed in the Middle East if Iraq fails. No matter how cynical you may be, or even if you would view it as a sufficiently successful conservative policy, it seems unlikely that the next Republican presidential candidate will be pitching a "Replace Hussein with a good totalitarian despot" policy.

While Democrats differ over whether the invasion was right, notes an introduction by Marshall and Jeremy Rosner, both national interests and national honor demand that "we not abandon the Iraqi people to chaos and sectarian violence."

Maybe the candidate can pitch this new program as "victory with honor." That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? For that matter, is it necessary to speak of both "national interests" and "national honor", other than as a rhetorical tool to trap an opponent? After all, if a policy advances "national honor" but simultaneously undermines "national interests", sometimes you have to swallow your pride and do what is right for the country.

But seriously, why is it that only the Democrats are expected to formulate an advance a plan, while the Republicans are given carte blanche to propose the meaningless choice between "sticking it out" and "pulling out now"? If as the book Diehl endorses suggests, "President Bush and his team have mismanaged virtually every aspect of postwar reconstruction", aren't we continuing toward a point where "sticking it out" will leave us with no choice but to abandon Iraq, whatever the consequence to our national interests and honor?

News Flash - He's The Same Guy You Married

Richard A. Viguerie laments in the Washington Post ("Bush's Base Betrayal") that George Bush hasn't fulfilled his expectations of a "conservative" President.

In 2004, Republican leaders pleaded with conservatives -- particularly religious conservatives -- to register people to vote and help them turn out on Election Day. Those efforts strengthened Republicans in Congress and probably saved the Bush presidency. We were told: Just wait till the second term. Then, the president, freed of concern over reelection and backed by a Republican Congress, would take off the gloves and fight for the conservative agenda. Just wait.

We're still waiting.

It isn't that Bush didn't try to do some of the things that Viguerie-style conservatives desire - it's that he tried and failed. Think Social Security "reform". But I'm not going to argue very hard - there's very little about Bush which is truly conservative, unless you include as conservative his eagerness to subvert personal freedoms in the name of national security or religion.

The current relationship between Washington Republicans and the nation's conservatives makes me think of a cheating husband whose wife catches him, and forgives him, time and time again. Then one day he comes home to discover that she has packed her bags and called a cab -- and a divorce lawyer.

Try again. Viguerie is in the position of a spouse who, after years of marriage, complains, "My wife is exactly the way she was when I married her, and I knew what she was like when I married her, but I thought she would change."

Big Yellow Taxi as a Conservative Anthem

Now that I know how rock lyrics are supposed to be interpreted, I realize that I've been wrong all these years about Big Yellow Taxi. Let me explain. The Pretenders Song, My City Was Gone, is apparently a conservative song - the 13th most conservative rock song of all time:

Virtually every conservative knows the bass line, which supplies the theme music for Limbaugh’s radio show. But the lyrics also display a Jane Jacobs sensibility against central planning and a conservative’s dissatisfaction with rapid change: "I went back to Ohio / But my pretty countryside / Had been paved down the middle / By a government that had no pride."

Isn't that more or less the same as "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"? Once I realized how I was supposed to interpret lyrics, I knew that I was supposed to take "They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum / And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them" literally - Joni is endorsing capitalism, and the preservation of forests through private enterprise rather than government regulation. Go Joni!

He also makes Sweet Home Alabama the #4 most conservative song,

A tribute to the region of America that liberals love to loathe, taking a shot at Neil Young’s Canadian arrogance along the way: "A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow."

News flash? And Godzilla?

A 1977 classic about a big green monster — and more: "History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of men."

Is there even a conservative way to interpret that passage, even if you're completely ignorant of its anti-nuclear origin?

Read the list - it's mostly wonderful self-parody.

It's In The Washington Times, So...

So what can you expect, right? Describing Liddy Dole's demand that Harry Reid apologize for suggesting that the push to make English the official language of the United States is racist,

Sen. Elizabeth Dole yesterday called on Minority Leader Harry Reid to apologize for charging this week that a proposal to make English the official language was racist.

The article later editorializes,

In the past, Mr. Reid has denied that racism has anything to do with the debate over immigration.

Sure, but we're talking about making English the national language, not immigration.

"Values Voters" - Just Another Brand

Today, George Will asks, "Who Isn't A 'Values Voter'?" He complains,

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

It's the marketing of a brand George, like being a "K-Mart Shopper". It's actually pretty good marketing - It let's an unthinking, bigoted voter feel better than you: "I hate gays, so I will be a 'values voter' by voting for a constitutional amendment which bans government benefits for same-sex couples, and sneer at everybody else as having no values."

It is odd that some conservatives are eager to promote the semantic vanity of the phrase "values voters." And it is odder still that the media are cooperating with those conservatives

The former is not odd - it's good marketing. The latter? Well, I'm sure somebody will find a way to hold it up as proof of "liberal media bias"....

Will, who is preternaturally incapable of even mildly criticizing the political right without attacking the political left, deliberately confuses a politician's appeal to a voter's values with the politician's making an appeal to "values voters".

Hillary Clinton, speaking recently at the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention, scolded "kids," by which she evidently meant young adults, for thinking "work is a four-letter word." She was said to be courting values voters.

She was said by whom to be courting "values voters"? By George Will? Here's how a self-appointed spokesman for "values voters" regards Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton suggested that Democrats go to church for a time to learn the language. Who is stupid now? (Although they might benefit from spending some time in church.)

Do liberals really think that by being able to quote a bit of scripture or to understand Liturgy they are going to be able to win over the values voters? I guess she really thinks we are stupid beyond belief.

How about the bloviations of David Limbaugh?

I'll not address the curious context of Hillary's particular biblical references, as others have covered that subject well. But I will say that when certain famed liberal politicians, like Hillary and John Kerry, invoke Scripture, it seems transparently incongruous.

It's as if they're saying, "Look at me, Middle America, I am bilingual, too: I can talk Scripture as fluently as I can speak English, and I can interweave religion and politics as seamlessly as Roy Moore. So vote for me, Bible-thumpers."

Limbaugh is speaking directly to those who proudly wear the "values voter" brand.

Yes, George, if you presuppose that people who vote based upon their personal values are "values voters", your rhetorical question can be answered "Nobody!" But as you know, the people who have worked so hard to advance the "values voters" brand have something completely different in mind.

Law Professor Creativity in Law School Exams

This post over at the Volokh Conspiracy brought back memories, good and bad, about law professors' efforts to be clever in drafting their exams. To some degree, a clever hypothetical can interject a small dose of comic relief into an intense examination process. At the same time, it isn't particularly creative to set the hypothetical in the "State of Grace", "State of Ignorance" or "State of Anxiety". At least to me, such obvious jokes aren't particularly impressive, and aren't likely to help with a law student's State of Mind.

I had one professor who, well, was a lunkhead. He did use one of the obvious "State of" jokes for the context of his hypothetical, but then gave all of the various actors in the hypothetical meaningless, generic and extraordinarily similar names along the lines of the "Mr. Smith of the ABC Company," and "Mr. Jones of the CBA Corporation". The professor's personality left me with little doubt that he was looking for a "gotcha" - that he was less interested in grading the students on what they knew than downgrading them, for example, for mistakenly referencing the "ABC Corporation".

I don't mind the fact that law professors have the time to be creative in writing their examinations, as long as the time they spend being clever doesn't take away from their writing a clear, fair exam. But I am curious as to whether this type of exam-drafting creativity is commonly seen in any other graduate school context.

How Horrible That The Stripper I Watched Was A College Student

There has been quite a bit of commentary on the stripper from the Duke Lacrosse Team sexual assault case where a male editorial columnist or talking head will complain about how horrible it is that a woman would pay for college by working as a stripper. An example,

Now I’m going to be really harsh on her because she isn’t the only single mother in the country trying to get an education and I know way too many of these women who have actually gone on to promising careers WITHOUT stepping to pay for college. Yes folks I am saying that this young lady had choices and at 27-years-old she could have made some better ones. Yet the reality is that she did what she did to pay for school and that was her choice.

Another example,

A couple of basic questions tend to get overlooked. What's the deal with any group of college students thinking it's a perfectly normal thing to hire strippers for a party? What do their parents say when they see that charge on the credit card bill? For that matter, what's the deal with a college student, whatever financial pressure she might be under, thinking that working at night as an outcall stripper is a perfectly acceptable - and safe - way to support herself? It's not blaming the victim to ask if she couldn't have made better choices.

So the problem isn't that she was a stripper, but that she dared to both be a stripper and go to college? Or is it that no woman should be a stripper, and any woman who chooses to do so has obviously made bad choices.

If it's a judgment against all women who become strippers, I have yet to hear one of these commentators describe that they have never seen a stripper perform at a party. For that matter, I have yet to hear one state that he hasn't hired a stripper. I can almost imagine them interviewing strippers for a bachelor party. "I assume that this is a dead end for you - that you're a high school drop-out with no plans for the future. No? You're in college? You plan to get a degree then enter the traditional workforce? I'm sorry, young lady, I can't condone such bad choices."

You know what? Maybe there should be financial programs which help people go to college so they don't become sex workers to pay for their tuition, books, and housing. But doesn't the same hold true for students who work other jobs, such as food service? Why aren't these same people lamenting that students struggle to get by working too many hours in low-wage jobs? Is it that it's okay to wait tables for a fraction of the income, because it's not "immoral" to wait tables, even if the person judging the morality of your occupation has been content to financially support both career choices.

The Value of a High School Diploma

Back in the 1980's when I was hiring entry level food service workers on a regular basis, whether or not they had a high school diploma could be an important factor in whether or not they got an interview. I never asked about GPA, areas of study, or... well, really anything about the academic side of their diploma. The diploma correlated in my experience with a better set of core competency skills (for example, I would not have to explain to the employee how to measure 1/4 pound on a digital scale), and during times when there was a large stack of applications it was an easy way to narrow the pool of applicants under consideration.

Really, in today's era, what sort of job do you get on the basis of a high school diploma alone? If you choose employment over college, the range of job opportunities available to you narrows each year. Now yes, a prospective employer should be able to anticipate that a high school graduate will be able to translate fractions to decimals when selling sliced meats or cheese in the deli, but how many jobs which are available to high school graduates expect much more than that?

I started to write this before I saw Mike's post over at Crime and Federalism describing the abuse of accommodation of disability by law school students, which in turn leads to Walter Olson's implication that somebody will suffer harm if students who have successfully completed all of their coursework, but fail a standardized graduation test, get their diploma. The thing is, a high school diploma isn't worth much on the job market beyond signifying that you have successfully completed all of your coursework. The last time I saw an application form for a fast food restaurant, at the time Burger King, they included a math test for all applicants. Even in a different era, when a high school diploma was a requirement to get into a union job that could potentially pave your way to a solidly middle class lifestyle, you had to get through the interview. So who, exactly, is hurt if these kids get their diplomas?

(If it needs saying, I'm not arguing in favor of the status quo, and I favor improving schools to the point that it wouldn't occur to people that such a test were even necessary.)

This Firm Has To Be Charging Copying Fees....

• First motion for summary disposition with supporting brief - 19 pages. Plus about 500 pages of exhibits.


• Second motion for summary disposition with supporting brief - 20 pages. Plus the same exhibits.

Both were filed at the same time.

• Renewed first motion for summary disposition with supporting brief - 20 pages. Plus the same exhibits.


• Renewed second motion for summary disposition with supporting brief - 22 pages. Plus the same exhibits.

Both were filed at the same time.

• Revised renewed second motion for summary disposition with supporting brief - 20 pages. Plus the same exhibits.

If they're not charging the client a copying fee per page, the firm is wasting its own money. If they are charging the client copying fees, they seem to be intentionally burning through the client's money.

If it costs you 8 cents per page to produce the copy, and you bill the client 25 cents per page... unnecessarily reproducing 2,000 pages of documents generates an additional $340 in profit per copy. One copy for the client, one copy for the file, one copy for the court, one copy for the judge, one copy for opposing counsel.... $1,700. Charge 50 cents per page, and you've made about $4,200, just for hitting the print button a few extra times.

Take That, Freud!

At TPM Cafe, Mark Schmitt psychoanalyzes the President in relation to his treatment of his father's former agency:

I don’t have a very specific theory here, but it seems natural to wonder whether this almost inexplicable hostility to the CIA as an institution has some deeper roots in Bush’s complex relationship to his father.

I have a theory here, but it's not as much fun.

Imagine your father served for many years as an executive in a company, and later became CEO of its parent corporation. A decade later you are the CEO of the parent, and have discussed with your father not only the inefficiencies and absurdities of the subsidiary, but how his own efforts to reform it were unsuccessful. You have the power to impose significant change on the subsidiary, so you do.

Now let's assume you aren't very good at your job.

New from HUD - Subsidies for Bridges in Brooklyn

There has been some controversy over an account related by Secretary Alphonso Jackson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in which he related how he was going to award a lucrative contract to a person but changed his mind when that person expressed that he did not like President Bush.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Jackson doesn't deny saying it - he just says that it didn't happen, and he put the joke in the first person to make it funnier. Joke? That's what Jackson's spokesperson, Dustee Tucker, told the Chicago Tribune:

"You know when you tell a joke you put yourself in first person, for delivery," she said. "You say I was on this train and so and so did this even if you know it wasn't a train. The secretary was putting himself in that first person to make the story more effective...

Wow. He's a funny guy. This part of the explanation is more telling:

"So he was offering an anecdote to say, this is how politics works in DC. In DC people won't just stab you in the back, they'll stab you in the front. And so the secretary's point was a hypothetical, what he said was an anecdote. It did not happen."

Oh... so it didn't happen, but it could have happened had somebody been so foolish as to express disagreement with President Bush, and thus it was important to advise the members of the Dallas Real Estate group that they shouldn't disclose any dislike for Bush if they want government contracts.... with some other agency where this could happen (if things like this happened, but they don't). (Are your eyes rolling yet?)

According to that Tribune piece,

The main message Tucker wanted to leave me with was that Jackson didn't yank anyone's contract because he vehemently disagreed with the Bush administration. Several times she said Jackson had nothing to do with contracting. That was done elsewhere in the department.

And certainly it is impossible that anybody in the agency would be influenced by the position of the Secretary, let alone take instruction from the Secretary.

Does he need a better story? A better spokesperson?

The Consequence of Social Promotion

It seems that the effect of social promotion policies in California, the state has imposed a standardized test on graduating seniors to see if they really deserve a diploma. A lawsuit has been filed, complaining that if students pass all of their classes they should get a diploma even if they fail the test. TChris at TalkLeft suggests that kids in poor schools, where the failure rates are the highest, probably don't get the same level of educational opportunity as kids from afflluent schools.

To me, the test and lawsuit highlight two problems: First, the problem of social promotion. Second, catering to the lowest common denominator. It may well be that students in poor schools need even more academic support than they presently receive - and if the state is serious about making a high school diploma mean something, it should seek to provide that support such that kids have the opportunity to do well - and fail kids who lack the aptitude or initiative to succeed.

"Oh," the lament goes... "if you fail kids you'll stigmatize them and make them more likely to drop out, then they won't get their diploma." Is it supposed to be better to have kids who function far below grade level sit through class after class, get "socially promoted", and then fail a standardized final examination such that they don't get their diploma anyway?

In relation to those who are advancing this lawsuit, is it better that a functionally illiterate kid be "socially promoted' and never tested in any meaningful way before he or she receives a high school diploma?

In relation to proponents of this test, is it better to avoid setting any intermediate standards which might identify the problem sooner, as opposed to testing kids on their way out the door when you no longer have to take any responsibility for the failure of the school system by bringing the low performers up to standard?

Close enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and law professors

According to Law Professor Eugene Volokh, a leading reason law schools have only one exam per course is, that's the way law students want it:

Most law school exams, to my knowledge, involve a single end-of-semester exam. Some comments in this thread argue that this is pedagogically unsound, and that having several exams — a final plus a midterm or two — would better measure people's knowledge. (It might also help students learn the material better.) I'm not sure that this is so, because I haven't looked into the research; but it seems plausible, and colleagues I trust have said that the research does support this. Let's assume then that this is right. Why then the single-exam format?

Some of the commenters identified one important answer: Professors hate grading exams, and would thus rather grade one exam than two or more. . . .

I think there's a lot of truth to this, but let me suggest an extra factor: I suspect that most students prefer the one-exam structure as well, so that there's little pushback against the professors' one-exam preference, and there would likely be some pushback against professors' attempts to shift to the "better" two- or three-exam format.

Well, then, let me propose that most students would prefer no exams at all, with everybody getting a guaranteed "A" or "A+". (Prof. Volokh describes the near-elimination of grades at Yale and Berkeley, and suggests that it is a school's market power which enables it to abolish traditional grading. That's probably true, but is an issue apart from what students would likely prefer.)

Granted, if everybody got the same grade some students would likely resent the students they perceive as having lesser ability getting "A's" just for showing up in class. (Or would you even have to show up? Students probably would also vote down a mandatory attendance policy.) Yet I've never heard students complain that a grading curve is too soft. No small number of law students pick their electives based upon a professor's curve from the prior year.

Speculation that additional exams might increase law student stress is interesting, but the fact is that in most law schools there are professors who hold midterms and I don't recall students wilting from the additional pressure.

Is it presumptuous of me to suggest that graduate school professors should care about which teaching and testing methods are the best means of advancing and measuring student comprehension and ability? That they should implement sound teaching and testing methods even if they prove less than popular with their students?

Professor Volokh speculates that employers don't much care about the accuracy of one grade or another, and presumes that "random noise in the grading probably averages out in considerable measure when you look at the student's entire transcript. Even if a professor views a law degree as nothing more than a rough equivalent to a "union card" which qualifies a student to get employment as a lawyer, I would still hope that the professor would strive to avoid adding "random noise" to a student's transcript.

Your Civic Duty: Go To The Movies

It is a strange era we live in when we are told that it is our "civic duty" to see a movie. Perhaps the stranger part is hearing that argument from George Will, who would presumably have heaped scorn upon somebody who made a similar assertion about Fahrenheit 911. (Beyond how they relate to Will's political philosophies, I neither mean to compare the two films nor to gloss over the various portions of Fahrenheit 911 which were in my opinion deliberately misleading).

George Will adheres to a philosophy that "you should not rely upon your government", but scorns the notion that you shouldn't trust your government:

After an astonishing 56 months without a second terrorist attack, this nation perhaps has become dangerously immune to astonishment. The movie may quicken our appreciation of the measures and successes - many of which must remain secret - that have kept would-be killers at bay.

Who cares that there is no evidence to support his faith in secret successes (based on secret measures). The important thing is to believe.His adoration for a commencement address given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. further evidences his adherence to this version of "faith". Holmes wrote:

But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.

(A quarter-century before Holmes spoke, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, expressed a similar sentiment.) As we all could be "potential soldiers" in this war in which "the front can be anywhere", in Will's view we apparently all owe the government a soldier's trust in his superior officers and unquestioning obedience to its orders. (Unless, of course, Clinton is the President, in which case a bombing attack directed at Al Qaeda is meant "to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life".)

The civics lesson, though, of United 93 can't be to have blind trust in the government. There were many points at which the government could have detected and prevented the 9/11 hijackings. (The question as to whether it would have been reasonable to expect them to put together the pieces in time to prevent the hijackings is subject to debate. The fact that various government actors held the information which, if pieced together, could have been used to prevent the attacks is not.) Will asks us to draw a different lesson:

The hinge on which the movie turns are 13 words that a passenger speaks, without histrionics, as he and others prepare to rush the cockpit, shortly before the plane plunges into a Pennsylvania field. The words are: "No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves." Those words not only summarize this nation's situation in today's war but also express a citizen's general responsibilities in a free society.

That's great, George. The next time I fly I'll be sure to get the passenger manifest in advance, and screen it for suspected criminals and terrorists myself.

With The Exception of Yoko Ono, That Is

Perhaps now that the latest Apple v Apple trademark suit has been resolved in favor of the computer maker, the Beatles and their heirs can get back to making money the way they used to - by creating music.

Everything You Didn't Want To Know About David Brooks

(Sorry, although I'm not sure that I should be - the New York Times links are "behind the firewall".)

Even though I'm no fan of David "Babbling" Brooks, even after I was led to the piece by an email making fun of it, I gave him a pass last week when he wrote an editorial (Lunch Period Poli Sci) declaring that your social clique in high school defines your future. (Pass revoked.)

In that column Brooks only found nuance when describing nerds as the only group which falls into two categories: the bad "liberal" kind who become "scuffed-shoed intellectuals who have as much personal courage as a French chipmunk in retreat", and the good "Brooks" kind who sneer at everybody else in the world - I mean "geeks who have decided their fellow intellectuals should never be allowed to run anything and have learned to speak slowly so the jocks will understand them." Right, David... adult jocks can't wait to listen to slow speaking, condescending, conservative nerds. And the only shift between high school politics and adulthood is a miraculous realization by the jocks that they need the intellectual leadership of people like Brooks. (I'm not making fun of him - he actually says that. How do you make fun of inadvertent self-parody?)

When Brooks says,

The nerds continue to believe that the self-reflective life is the only life worth living (despite all evidence to the contrary) while the cool, good-looking, vapid people look down upon them with easy disdain on those rare occasions they are compelled to acknowledge their existence.

One can picture Brooks in high school, picturing himself as "culturally and intellectually superior but socially aggrieved" and longing for the day when he finally got to sneer along with (and secretly sneer at) the cool kids.

Today in Marshmallows and Public Policy, he tells us about himself as a kindergartener - or at least how he remembers himself - sitting quiety, doing as he was told, and meekly waiting to inherit the earth. Everything he is he was in high school, but apparently it was forecast by his ability to resist temptation.

Brooks references experiments performed by Walter Mischen in the 1970's, testing whether four-year-olds could resist eating a marshmallow for fifteen minutes. If they did not, socio-economic data indicates that they were more likely to develop drug problems and were more likely to grow up to be bullies. If they did not, they were more likely to grow up to score significantly higher on the SAT, go to better colleges, and have better "adult outcomes". Brooks tells us that poor kids, statistically speaking, have less self-control than kids from middle class homes.

While I think it is safe to say that Brooks wouldn't have grabbed the marshmallow, I am not so sure that with somebody like Brooks it would have reflected intrinsic self-control - he seems more like the sort who would have resisted the temptation to avoid the reprobation of adults. Which, perhaps, is why he believes schools should start teaching self-control. That also perhaps explains why Brooks misses what seems to be the essential point of language he quotes:

What works, says Jonathan Haidt, the author of "The Happiness Hypothesis," is creating stable, predictable environments for children, in which good behavior pays off — and practice. Young people who are given a series of tests that demand self-control get better at it over time.

When you take kids for whom school is the most stable and predictable element of their lives, school isn't the problem. Nor is training kids to sit quietly in rows very much of a solution, even if achieved by training them to "distract themselves" by thinking about something other than what the teacher is saying. Brooks suggests that some New York schools adopted programs based upon Mischel's research - why isn't he describing their success?

Brooks also suggests,

Somehow we've entered a world in which we obsess over structural reforms and standardized tests, but skirt around the moral and psychological traits that are at the heart of actual success.

Wait a minute though - I thought we were talking tendencies here. It's one thing to take a study which confirms what is well known, that a person's essential personality forms at an early age, and it is quite another to say that a kid who grabs a marshmallow will not be a successful adult. When Brooks describes "people without self-control skills for whom "Life is a parade of foolish decisions: teen pregnancy, drugs, gambling, truancy and crime, is he not describing the behavior of an awful lot of people in government?

Besides, since when has it been considered conservative to attempt social engineering through the public school system?

Disney's New Position on Copyright - Full Reproduction is 'Fair Use'

Well, not really.

But it is funny to trace back from this comment, the author of which is a Supervising Web Producer for E! Online, within the context that E! "is owned by a joint venture between Comcast (50%), The Walt Disney Company (40%), and Liberty Media (10%)."

After locking a thread in which somebody suggests that E! Online might be sued for allowing forum participants to post the full text of articles cut and pasted from copyrighted sources, an E! employee expressed, "we are looking into a definite set of guidelines to address these types of threads." When challenged further, the E! employee asserted,

fair use anyone?

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

This inspired the retort, "Posting the entire article is hardly fair use."The E! employee countered,

im not trying to challenge anyone. im just saying its not that clear cut. but we'll leave that up to our legal team. for now, please hang tight. thank you.

Perhaps he should run it past this legal team:

Disney Enterprises Inc. and four other entertainment giants are suing two downtown Los Angeles produce vendors for allegedly selling pinatas bearing unlicensed cartoon characters.

* * *

Once, Disney sued a Florida day-care center that showed paintings of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy on its outside walls. The school took down the pictures.

I'm not meaning to pick on E's staff here - I really mean to pick on Disney.

All Roads Lead To Gated Communities....

I am often amused when self-described libertarians engage in argument that really boils down to an abrogation of any sense of a social compact, particularly where they are the affluent progeny of affluent parents.

Because the rich can take care of themselves, the argument goes, the poor should be left to care for themselves. The externalities are ignored. Usually when you get a larger perspective on the speaker, you find an associated set of beliefs and values which speak not of libertarianism, but the notion that they and their wealthy peers should not have to pay taxes which inure to the benefit of people they deem beneath them. They can afford association fees which pay for the private roads of their gated communities. They assume the middle classes can form private associations to assume ownership of their own streets (and any gates they wish to install). And if they can't (or if they're poor), too bad, so sad. That's why God created dirt roads and tar paper shacks.

So when I read something like this,

Many commenters seem astonished by the idea of private streets. My parents have a house in a private, gated community, where the streets are indeed privately owned. Access to the community is for owners and their guests. The community functions quite well, as far as I can tell, and, among other potential advantages, there is virtually no crime. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there is nothing either radical or impractical about streets being privately owned.

I am left wondering if the speaker is truly expressing opinions which arise from libertarian notions of private contractual obligations taking the place of government ownership and maintenance of roadways, or if they have chosen libertarianism as the philosophy most consistent with their desire to avoid taxes, social responsibility, and exposure to people with different ideas or (gasp) who are poor.

Your Rabid Dog Lawyers?

I saw a Google AdSense ad for a law firm,

Smith Defense Team
Certified criminal law
specialists Free Consult -
Beyond Aggressive!

(I changed the name of the firm to something generic.)

How does "beyond aggressive" compare to, say, a "pit bull lawyer"? Is it roughly the same, or something more akin to a "rabid pit bull lawyer"?

What if Kristof Wanted To Teach Journalism?

Today, behind the NY Times firewall, Nicholas Kristof offers Teachers Without Pedigrees, a proposal that we should reduce or eliminate teacher certification requirements to increase the pool of candidates for public K-12 education. Kristof doesn't mention accelerated certification programs already available, perhaps because he deems an additional nine to fifteen months of schooling and student teaching to be too much of an impediment to somebody whose interest is more transitory.

Suppose Colin Powell tires of giving $100,000-a-pop speeches and wants to teach high school social studies. Suppose Meryl Streep has a hankering to teach drama.

Alas, they would be "unqualified" for a public school. Elite private schools would snap them up, of course, but public schools that are begging for teachers would have to turn them away because they don't have teacher certification.

Why are we dreaming up these hypotheticals, involving celebrities with no apparent interest in taking over a public school classroom? Why isn't Mr. Kristof describing his own desire to teach, and how he is unable to do so by virtue of his lack of a teaching certificate? Because that's the heart of the issue - the best teachers aren't people we wish were in the classroom due to their celebrity, but are people who want to be in the classroom. Kristof notes,

The other problem is that the quality of teachers is deteriorating, mostly because — fortunately! — women have more career options. A smart and ambitious woman graduating from college in 1970 often ended up as a third-grade teacher; today, she ends up as a surgeon or senator.

So the problem is that most people, given a choice between being a K-12 classroom teacher or a different career, choose a different career? And the solution to this is to make it easier for people who have chosen other career paths to dip their toes into the water of public education, without making any real commitment to that career path?

It's not that I'm enamored with teacher certification programs - I'm not. It's also not that I disagree with the idea that people who do not have teaching certificates should be able to experience what it is like to try to teach in a public school classroom - in fact, I've seen some people who wanted to be teachers find out during student teaching or their first year of teaching that they really don't want to be in a classroom or simply don't have the aptitude for classroom management. I wouldn't mind seeing more students get some classroom experience before they are accepted into public education programs, but suspect that such an initiative might in fact further reduce the pool of graduates from teaching colleges.

Kristof suggests giving principals the option of hiring highly qualified, thoroughly screened, but uncertified teachers:

That's the situation in some of America's most elite private high schools. Phillips Exeter Academy, for example, says that 85 percent of its faculty have advanced degrees but probably only a handful are certified. (Since it is private, it doesn't worry about certification or even keep track of which teachers are certified.)

At Exeter, for example, biology is taught by a former doctor. Japanese is taught by a former businessman who worked in Japan. And a history teacher arrived with no teaching experience but has published five books.

Hoo boy.... We're going to pretend that the experience of Phillips Exeter Academy, with day tuition and fees approaching $30,000 per year, would be shared by public schools? Why not make a comparison to parochial schools, which are also at liberty to hire uncertified teachers, but which often pay less and offer fewer benefits than public schools? Who knows? Maybe somewhere in the Catholic school system there's a former doctor teaching biology classes.

I have some personal experience from "way back when" working as a substitute teacher. (In most public school districts you can serve as a substitute teacher if you have a bachelor's degree, or possibly if you have completed certain undergraduate coursework.) I recall a subsequent law day when I gave a number of presentations in public schools (something that is, by the way, much easier than teaching) followed by a presentation in a Catholic middle school. The difference was striking - well-behaved, well-groomed kids, sitting quietly in their desks? It isn't that their teachers are paid more or are better qualified. It is that the kids' parents have a different attitude toward education, with different overall attitudes both to the teachers and to their own kids, and their school can decline to accept them back (or even expel them) if they fail to comport to expected standards of conduct.

Kick that same concept up to a level where the tuition is higher than most of those Catholic schoolkids' parents were taking home on an annual basis, and you're going to not only have a much more enjoyable teaching environment, but one which can pay teachers very well. Public school teachers aren't lining up to take a cut in pay or benefits to work in a private school, just as Meryl Streep, Colin Powell, and Nicholas Kristof aren't lining up to teach in public school, but I doubt that Exeter has any shortage of highly qualified applicants.

Kristof also mentions a program which places college graduates in inner city classrooms,

One superb initiative for young college graduates is Teach for America, which last year had 17,000 applicants for 2,000 spots teaching in low-income schools. Among those who applied were 12 percent of Yale's senior class and 8 percent of Harvard's and Princeton's.

Sure. They make a two-year commitment to teach in the inner city. With the ability to reject 88% of the applicants the program should have no difficulty selecting applicants who have the necessary interest and aptitude to complete the program. Program participants come in with a new college graduate's energy and enthusiasm and are gone long before they burn out. Teach for America indicates that 60% of those who complete the program remain in education as "teachers, principals, education policy advisors and leaders and staff of education reform organizations", but provides no figure for how many remain in inner city schools.

For Kristof, the essence of teacher qualification isn't training or intelligence - "Maybe it helps to be brilliant and to have studied teaching, but mostly it is personality." So it is his own reflections on his personality which keeps "math geek" Kristof from teaching high school calculus?

You know what? We're not going to get a significantly increased pool of highly qualified teachers (with or without sparkling personalities) without making some changes to our attitudues toward teaching, without being willing to increase teacher pay, and while we continue to drive good teachers out of the profession with standardized testing requirements which drive the fun (and real learning) out of a good classroom.

A Bit Of Time (And A Lot Of Paper) Saved

If you hire a business firm to do your defense litigation work instead of a (mere) insurance defense firm, you might want to remind them to read the court rules. A couple of months ago, I wrote responses to a summary disposition motion. The plaintiff's counsel wanted to add material which pushed the motion and brief over the limit, so I told him to contact the judge's clerk to check their policy. Some judges are flexible, but this one wasn't - the attorney was informed that the judge would reject his answer and brief if they exceeded a combined twenty pages.

Fast forward to the latest summary disposition motion filed by the defense, which exceeded twenty pages between the motion and brief. I suggested that the plaintiff's counsel contact the court to see if it would still be entertaining the motion. Nope. It will have to be refiled in proper form by the plaintiff, and renoticed for hearing.

Once again, this is a mistake a second year associate at a (mere) insurance defense firm would have caught. I wonder if the business firm handling the case will refrain from billing the client for the time and costs associated with their mistake....

Some Things Just Shouldn't Be Sung In Translation....

Can you believe this? Wait until the President finds out.

Restaurant Innovation and the Health Code

It sounds like New York has very stringent requirements for restaurant hygiene, and, as one would expect, that can interfere with innovative cooking techniques and the quality of food produced. A chef comments,

While the inspector is mandated to have a single-minded focus on the Department of Health's taste-killing rules, a good chef is driven by many concerns — the health and well-being of her customer paramount among them — and it is in her hands that I would rather entrust my eating experiences.

While I agree with the chef that "serious chefs are compulsively clean by nature" and Not one of us would serve a customer something that we ourselves would not relish to eat, and also with his observation that sanitarians would regulate a range of delicacies and specialty foods out of existence, the health code is not just about what happens inside the restaurant. No matter how carefully food is selected, there is a chance that it will have been contaminated prior to its introduction to the restaurant kitchen.

The temperature requirements imposed across this nation ensure that most bacteria are killed in the cooking process, and that hot food is maintained at a high enough temperature that it does not become a breeding ground for bacteria. It also prevents certain innovative food preparation techniques, and limits the ability of restaurants to preserve hot food in a palatable form. Under a heat lamp or on a warming tray, even the best of food is quickly reduced to cafeteria fare.

That said, I think that professional chefs should be able to experiment with innovations such as sous vide - but they should first propose a set of health regulations to govern the innovation and have them passed by the health department. The consumer should also be made aware of any additional danger posed by the food preparation technique. Warnings about raw and undercooked food haven't scared customers away from the sushi bar. After all, the greatest danger is not so much that the best chefs in the best restaurants, working with the highest quality and most carefully selected ingredients, will put their patrons at undue risk. The greatest danger is that the same cooking techniques will be applied by chefs and restaurants which don't act with such care. There's a reason that health regulations are aimed at the lowest common denominator.

The New Press Secretary - A Big Mistake

Other than the obvious "snow job" joke, was it a huge mistake for the Bush Administration to select Tony Snow as press secretary? With the number of opinions Snow has made on the record, we're already seeing this type of news coverage:

Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, made that point last month in his previous role as a conservative polemicist: "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget."

Just wait until he starts contradicting himself at press conferences....

"That was a prostitute?"

Looking at reports of the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal, that the lubrication^[1] of certain Members of Congress and their staffs^[2] involved the provision of prostitutes, I can't help but think of Neil Bush....

The Bush divorce, completed in April after 23 years of marriage, was prompted in part by Bush's relationship with another woman. He admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.

"It was very unusual," Bush said.

One would hope that the defense contractors in the Duke case had their prostitutes wear some sort of ID, such that the people at the parties didn't suffer from similar confusion....

-----
Footnotes

1. No pun intended.

2. No pun intended. Really. Why don't you believe me?

A Word About "BigLaw"

I recall reading some comments over at Even Schaeffer's Legal Underground where a former BigLaw associate huffed that businesses would do better to hire BigLaw to defend their cases instead of hiring (mere) insurance defense firms, purportedly because BigLaw would be more competent. This, of course, inspires the question of... at what point a law firm becomes a (mere) insurance defense firm, regardless of its size and sense of self-importance. And if they don't have enough work that they can truly specialize in defense litigation, is it really true that they will be more competent in serving their clients?

I am presently helping a plaintiff's lawyer with a case being defended by the self-insured defendant's business firm, rather than an insurance defense firm. Beyond the stunning ability to fell trees and produce ridiculous motions, I'm not clear on how the client is advantaged... unless paying much larger legal fees than necessary is deemed an advantage. It's great, I suppose, that this firm is able to produce novel interpretations of statutes and court rules that its lawyers haven't encountered before, but a second year associate at a (mere) defense firm would be able to set them straight about how a court is likely to resolve the motion.

Nuclear Deterrence

Lawyers, Guns and Money points to an interesting blog post and article on the subject of nuclear deterrence - and how the U.S. military may no longer actually be deterred by the arsenals of other nuclear powers.

What? Australia's No Longer a Penal Colony?

New criminal law policy from the Blair government:

Tony Blair launches an unprecedented assault today on the legal and political establishment, accusing it of being 'out of touch' with the people - and pledges new moves to 'hassle, harry and hound' suspected criminals from Britain.

* * *

He outlines controversial new steps, ranging from seizing assets from suspected drug dealers - which could see anyone stopped with more than £1,000 having the money confiscated - to draconian new restrictions on the movements of those suspected of involvement in organised crime.

Will that include tourists?

A Note to the Educational Establishment

Hearing Rep. Rahm Emanuel argue in favor of "universal college education" reminded me of why undergraduate college degrees are diminishing in value, and why the culture of "it's cool to be dumb" is becoming prevalent on college campuses.

We pretend that everybody is equal in aptitude.

We simultaneously accept that everybody should have the opportunity to do well.

As a result we create a system which caters to the lowest common denominator. In high schools and increasingly in colleges, mediocrity not only earns a passing grade - it can earn an "A".

Our society should try to ensure that everybody has educational opportunity which helps them achieve their maximum potential. But we need to stop pretending that everybody is equal in their potential, or that vocational training is somehow less worthy than a college degree.

I'm not arguing for trying to force people into particular academic or vocational tracks based upon their aptitude. Individuals should still be able to choose the academic or training path they desire. But if somebody is unable or unwilling to do the work necessary to justify a passing grade based on merit, that person should receive a failing grade.

Failure can be stigmatizing, but we exaggerate that effect by creating a system in which virtually nobody fails. A system in which we pretend that if people try hard (even if we really know that most of them aren't really trying) almost everybody can earn an "A".

Fixing Health Care... the Wal-Mart Way?

Wal-Mart, perhaps most famous in relation to the subject for offering little health coverage to its employees and their families, is apparently offering to apply its genius to fixing the nation's health care system.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., at the center of debate over corporate responsibility for health care, said on Tuesday that it wants to use its cost-cutting expertise to help make the U.S. health care system more efficient.

* * *

Wal-Mart said health care is a national problem and required a joint effort from government, corporations and workers to find ways to make the system more efficient.

* * *

The retailer said the key is to figure out what is driving up health care costs -- just as Wal-Mart does with its vaunted supply chain network -- and then wring inefficiencies out of the system.

Wal-Mart tracks expenses so closely that cardboard boxes at its distribution centers bear a message reminding employees that each box costs the company 75 cents.

The retailer offered up its information technology expertise to help develop a system for keeping electronic medical records as another means of reducing costs.

Wal-Mart also said that lessons could be learned from health clinics it is opening in dozens of stores around the country, many of which serve uninsured patients who would otherwise go to the emergency room -- a major drain on health care resources.

Funny, I don't recall Wal-Mart suggesting that it needed help from the nation's workers, the government, or other coprorations to figure out how to run its own operations. Proposing electronic medical records, also, is far from an innovation.

Perhaps this is just a fancy press release for its planned in-store medical clinics (which presumably will also be the primary provider of medical care for its workers and their families under the next generation of Wal-Mart's employee health insurance plans).

Applying "The Bell Curve"

I'm personally not sure why, but from time to time people still post seeminlgy passionate defenses of The Bell Curve and its scholarship. This example left me wondering, though, why its advocates still press the issue so hard. The blog post suggests that a British university lecturer was disciplined for defending The Bell Curve in class - but if you read the linked article, he was a bit more extreme in his beliefs:

Dr Ellis gave an interview to the university’s student newspaper in which he described himself as “an unrepentant Powellite” who favoured repatriation if it were carried out “humanely”. He said that the British National Party was “a bit too socialist” for his liking.

He voiced support for the theory set out in The Bell Curve, a book published in 1994 by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, that white people had higher average IQs than blacks. He said the study had “demonstrated to me beyond any reasonable doubt there is a persistent gap in average black and white average intelligence”.

Dr Ellis also told Leeds students that women did not have the same intellectual capacity as men and that feminism, along with multiculturalism, was “corroding” Britain.

Even Enoch Powell, who inadvertently gave his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech on Hitler's birthday, was arguably a "repentant Powellite" at least insofar as that poor choice of date.

Let's assume for a moment that the criticisms of The Bell Curve are all 100% wrong - that it's the finest scholarship to ever grace the written page. What use does it have to those of us who are't "unrepentant Powellites", to the political right of the British National Party (which seeks to protect "the native British people" from immigrant populations), or in favor of booting dark-skinned minorities (save possibly Asians?) out of our nations?

Anyone?

"Nobody In The Nation Can Drive"

I've come to the conclusion that our nation is full of bad and inconsiderate drivers - it's just that you get used to the local version of inconderate, incompetent driving, such that it seems worse when you travel to other parts of the country.

... By The Skin Of Their Teeth

Had the U.S. Attorney's Office not backed off, this could have given a whole new meaning to "grilling" a suspect.

According to court documents and attorneys ... [the defendants] were told the government had a warrant to seize the grills from their mouths and that they were being taken to a dentist in Seattle for removal. ...

Grills, made popular by rappers such as Nelly, are customized teeth caps that are typically made of precious metals and jewels. The cost for a full set can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Some styles of grills can be snapped onto the teeth somewhat like an orthodontic retainer, while others are permanently bonded to the teeth. ...

Federal prosecutors, who presented the seizure warrant to a U.S. District Court judge on March 29, said they did not know that the grills were permanently bonded to the defendants' teeth.

Membership as Probable Cause

CrimProf Blog describes a recent 9th Circuit decision:

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in U.S. v. Gourde, No. 03-30262, ruled that mere membership in a pornographic website that contains both legal and illegal porn is enough to authorize the FBI to search a home computer.

I think the opinion can be read more narrowly - the court specifically references the affidavit in support of the search warrant, "The affidavit left little doubt that Gourde had paid to obtain unlimited access to images of child pornography knowingly and willingly, and not involuntary, unwittingly, or even passively", and the facts set forth in the affidavit make it exceptionally unlikely that Gourde would become and remain a member of the site without the intention of downloading images of minors. Still, it would be nice if the Court had been more explicit in its holding, for reasons Judge Kleinfeld describes in his dissent.

Is the holding of the majority opinion that if a person has subscribed to a site that has legal and illegal material, that suffices as probable cause for a search warrant? That if a person has paid money to look at material that is illegal to possess, he probably possesses it? If the holding is narrower than these formulations, everyone’s computer would be safer were the narrowing restrictions made clear. If it is not, the majority opinion is dangerous to everyone’s privacy.

It's a short step from "paid member" to "member" - broadly constructed, if you knowingly download P2P software, and know in using it that you can download pirated music files, software, copyrighted images, and probably also illegal pornography, would that be enough for a warrant? What if the authorities could also demonstrate that you had used the P2P software to access a hard drive which stores some unlawful material, had run searches which caused unlawful material to appear among your results (whether or not you downloaded it), or had downloaded illegal material (even though that might not have been apparent from the file name)? Even with paid membership, how much illegal content must be present on the site and how obvious must it be before you can potentially be the subject of a search warrant?

This assertion by the majority also raises my eyebrow:

Thanks to the long memory of computers, any evidence of a crime was almost certainly still on his computer, even if he had tried to delete the images. FBI computer experts, cited in the affidavit, stated that “even if . . . graphic image files[ ] have been deleted . . . these files can easily be restored.”

Is the FBI agent assuming an unsophisticated computer user who thinks that dragging icons into the trash "deletes" the associated file? Is that a reasonable assumption? And to say "easily" seems glib. I know a law firm which could have used that FBI agent a while back, when they accidentally deleted a large folder of documents from their server and somehow rendered the files unrecoverable (short of pulling the hard drive and submitting it to a data recovery service).

Back to Boot Camp

The Times states,

Now Apple has announced Boot Camp, which will allow some versions of Windows to run more or less natively on an Apple machine. ...

So the prospect of Boot Camp raises two very different scenarios. Windows users will buy Apple machines to run Windows. Or they may try out Apple's operating system just for the fun of it and get hooked.

Or maybe Mac users who want to be able to run some PC programs will find Boot Camp convenient, and far superior "Virtual PC" emulator software. Or maybe it will help convince people who want to transition away from Windows, which is substantially inferior to Mac OS X, but want relative certainty that they will be able to access their old files in the new system.

Telemarketers Are So Special....

I don't think I've gone a day this week without being hit by a telemarketer offering online promotion of my legal practice. The latest one said that they have a special technique which gets their clients' sites listed above all the other listings in Google. (Because AdWords is such a big secret.)

If these companies are so good at online promotion, why are they using telemarketers? And if these companies are so good at law firm promotion, why do they have so many practice areas available in my "territory"? "You want personal injury? No? How about family law? Criminal defense? Employment discrimination?" Well, no, I really don't.

Insults Between Academics

Prof. David Bernstein writes of an insult once uttered by one of his law professors:

When I was a student at Yale, one of my professors, the author of eminently forgettable and inconsequential works on law and economics, referred to Prof. Siegan as "that nut from San Diego, what's his name?"

Calling another academic a "nut from San Diego"? How inappropriate.

Declining NetFlix Service

(I'm not talking about their intentionally slow service for people whom they deem to be returning movies too quickly. I'm also not speaking of their seemingly chronic problem with ordering too few copies of newly released films to reasonably satisfy customer demand.)

Over the past two months my experience with NetFlix has involved repeated problems with movies being lost (and ultimately found) in the mail. They made an unexplained mistake in shipping one of the movies on my queue which, as a result, shows a "Shipped" date of "3/06/06" and a "Est. Arrival" date of "3/28/06" - twenty-two days! I have had two other movies "lost" in shipment to me, one due to an envelope coming apart in the mail (I received the portion of the envelope with my address on it - the part you tear off and discard before returning the movie) and another that simply didn't arrive (but was later found by NetFlix).

The processing time for returns is often much longer than it used to be, and now often seems to be three or four business days, and I don't believe that the USPS is responsible. It also seems to be more common for them to mail the new movie one or two business days after their receipt of a return.

I will grant that this could just be bad luck - a statistical anomaly which is unfortunately affecting my account. Are other Netflix subscribers having a better experience?

Moments from April Fool's Day History

Google's April Fool's Day joke reminds me of a similar joke from many years back, in the dark ages where the Internet was largely text-based. A clever prankster wrote a personality quiz which he promised would allow him to make highly promising romantic matches between those who took the quiz. In fact all matches that he made were random - yet some nonetheless developed into long-term relationships.

(Had he patented that joke as a business model, might he be able to extract licensing fees from eHarmony? Just a question....)