- Oregon 7-year-old gets apology, she can go on running her lemonade stand after all [Skenazy, Josh Blackman]
- “Judicial recusals and politics make a bad mix” [Bainbridge]
- Sypher guilty in extortion trial [Above the Law and followup, earlier]
- “Chevron’s Explosive Filing on Collusion Between Plaintiffs and the Ecuadorian Court-Appointed Expert” [Roger Alford, Opinio Juris and more, Alison Frankel/American Lawyer, Anderson, Volokh, ShopFloor]
- Meet author of “How to Sue Your Doctor … and Win!” [Media Matters via Popehat]
- FBI writes to Wikipedia demanding removal of representation of its official seal [Ron Coleman]
- “Kagan’s Confirmation Could Be High-Water Mark for Big Government” [Shapiro, Cato]
- “Righthaven’s lawsuits are ‘the McDonald’s coffee cases of copyright litigation'” [Las Vegas Sun via Romenesko]
3 Comments
btw, at the recusal post, you can see where i commented.
It is wrong to say that a gay man is automatically biased against straight people or something silly like that.
But the fact is that the day before Walker made his ruling, he couldn’t marry anyone he was likely to want to marry. And the day after he could. In that sense he had an INTEREST in the case that raised a reasonable question about his impartiality. And that is all the law requires.
But there was more. if you follow the link to my own bad blog in the bainbridge discussion, you will see where i link to a post by ed whelan when he shows all of the other things that call into question his impartiality, such as his violation of proceedure to get cameras in the courtroom.
And then there is the opinion itself which, as a lawyer, i have to say is ridiculous. at one point he claims it is a “fact” that gay marriage will not harm straight marriage. that is not a fact. that cannot be a fact. it is a prediction of the future. i can be around 99.9 sure that i will wake up tomorrow with bad breath and b.o. but it is not a fact until it actually happens.
You CAN say that there is little evidence it will have that effect. You CAN say, depending on what the facts actually are, that legalizing it for a while in California didn’t utterly destroy the institution there. you can note it hasn’t in other states as well.
But you can’t predict the future and call it a fact.
I’ll confess to a morbid curosity about the Karen Sypher trial. It was like watching a slow motion train wreck combined with a nightmare out-of-control client. From her calling the TV stations so they could report on her filing a rape complaint against Coach Pitino (three days after she was indicted for extortion), to her firing of her first 2 lawyers, to discussions of her past career as a car-show model, to revelations of her apparently making similar claims in a sexual harassment suit filed about 10 years ago, to trial testimony that sounded more like the script of a Jerry Springer show, to her recent self-comparision to Rosa Parks, to the defense resting without calling a witness (See “Risky defense gambit could derail facts for Karen Sypher jury” (August 7, 2010)
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010308080025 ), it was a case-study for anyone wishing to become a litigator. This is how bad — or strange — it can get.
Re: Kagan:
Did anyone else catch that Lindsey Graham, RINO-SC, announced that Jesus told him to vote for Kagan?