home about archives images stats contact

 

Don’t call it schadenfreude…

April 23rd, 2009

Call it a nightmare of the bureaucratic state. Call it capitalism gone bad. Call it the “law bubble” (a la the “housing bubble”) that has popped. Whatever you call it, this story about skilled, highly accomplished attorneys having trouble finding work says a lot about our economy, or at least the legal economy. Things are bad.

But what makes this truly postworthy is the 2nd paragraph of the third comment:

All joking aside, when I worked at a certain federal agency that collects money from taxpayers many years ago, the fax machine for incoming resumes was in a locked closet on the fourth floor of an old building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Once a week, a part-time secretary would take all of the accumulated faxes, and put about four of them on someone’s desk, and the rest went into the recycling bin. Often, there was not enough paper in the fax machine to last a day or two.

Can there be a better image of bureaucratic dystopia? If so, I have never seen it. Schwarzschild wormholes, indeed!

Posted in LawLaw | 1 Comment » 306 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

Hey Paul Krugman, where the hell are you, man?

March 25th, 2009

If you haven’t seen this video, you should. I’m not sure Paul Krugman has all the answers, but he’s been making some good points recently. For example, here are his thoughts on the Geithner “cash for trash” plan:

This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.

After all, we’ve just been through the firestorm over the A.I.G. bonuses, during which administration officials claimed that they knew nothing, couldn’t do anything, and anyway it was someone else’s fault. Meanwhile, the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.

And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing.

It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street. And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.

That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Regardless, the song and video are fun and add a much-needed bit of levity to this whole bailout debacle.

If you like that, also check out Jonathan Mann’s website where he’s posting a song/video every day. I’ve also been enjoying “My Obama Neurosis (In the Key of C).” It succinctly and humorously captures the ambivalence and bewilderment I’ve been feeling about our new president.

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment » 203 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

What’s Twitter good for?

March 22nd, 2009
Glenn Greenwald expresses something like my own sentiments about Twitter:
At the risk of appearing as crotchety as [John Cole] does, I share that bewilderment.  About Twitter messages, John says “they all read like cell phone text messages between 12 year olds,” and indeed, the only purpose I can discern is that it provides a format for expressing thoughts that are too inconsequential to merit a stand-alone article or post.  For precisely that reason, it is unsurprising that Twitter has become a huge hit among our media stars, for whom triviality is a guiding principle.

But, pre-Twitter, did we really have a shortage of venues devoted to petty musings?   I’d say the opposite is true.
That said, I have found one really useful thing that Twitter does and that I don’t think has ever before been possible: It gives you breaking news in real time before any other online outlet can get to it. Perhaps the best and most recent example was last Tuesday when Apple announced the details of iPhone OS 3.0. If we had to wait until traditional news outlets reported on it, we would have known nothing until several hours after the event. Of course, a few sites were “live blogging” the event, meaning they had people there and they were posting updates every five minutes or so to their blogs. That’s pretty helpful and close to what twitter can do. Still, the people there who were twittering the event were able to update continuously and twitter was able to aggregate all the updates and conversation about them into one stream that was easy to refresh and follow. All you had to do was search for the #iphone hashtag.

So twitter is really good at one thing: Breaking news. I’ve also followed a fire in Bozeman and the Tour of California bike race. If you know something is happening but can’t find much about it online, on tv, or elsewhere, try twitter. You just might find it exactly what you were looking for.

Posted in popcult | 3 Comments » 238 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

Good on New Mexico!

March 19th, 2009
Congratulations and thank you to the state of New Mexico, which has become the 15th state to abolish the death penalty. Montana may be next.

Thanks to DNA exonerations the number of people against the death penalty continues to grow. The SCOTUS effectively suspended the death penalty in 1972, finding its application arbitrary and therefore cruel and unusual. State legislatures rewrote their laws to once again make the penalty possible. Now, those same legislatures are deciding no amount of tinkering is going to create a system they can live with. While it’s true that these legislatures could return someday in the future and reinstate the death penalty, the current trend is headed the other way and thank god for that.

Posted in Crimlaw | 1 Comment » 231 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

“Nice” day

March 18th, 2009
We had our first real spring-like day yesterday in Chicago with temperatures in the mid-70s. It was beautiful, except apparently not for the ten people who got shot and the one who was stabbed. Apparently, the warm weather makes people violent.

That’s really not cool.

Something that is cool: this group of musicians playing “Kids” by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches.

The above links are proof that there is bad crazy and there is good crazy in this world. Something about that is reassuring.  

Posted in Life | No Comments » 158 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

Gotcha!

March 16th, 2009


teeth! (view it large)
Originally uploaded by xetark

L. took Sisu to the dog beach yesterday and someone caught her looking fierce!

Posted in Photo | 3 Comments » 197 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

Keeping On Top of the Collapse

March 16th, 2009

I gotta hand it to the ABA for keeping me up to date on the magnitude of the collapse of the legal job market with a constant stream of information about layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs. Apparently, last Monday was another record-setting day for legal layoffs with more than 730 lawyers and staffers losing their jobs. This follows two other record-setting days on Jan. 29 and Feb. 12, with more than 600 lawyers and staffers laid off on those days.

Awesome.

People keep telling me that these people being laid off are not really competition for me; they are biglaw lawyers and I’m looking for a public defender position and these are totally different things. I see that point, but when these people can’t even give their time away I am certain there are public defenders out there who are looking at this and thinking, “Yeah, I was going to look for some other kind of work but I think I’ll keep my job for now until things look better.” This means fewer openings for me. There’s also likely some small fraction of the biglaw layoffs who are deciding that now is the time to change careers and become public defenders (or, possibly more likely, prosecutors). If so, that means more competition for what few positions do open.

I’m not whining, I’m just saying. I’m lucky enough to actually have an interview today, so things may be looking up… at least for me. Fingers crossed.

Posted in LawLaw | No Comments » 157 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

Vermont v. Brillon: SCOTUS doesn’t get it.

March 10th, 2009

The SCOTUS yesterday held in Vermont v. Brillon that delays caused by a public defender do not count against the state in determining whether a defendant’s right to a speedy trial has been violated. (Opinion in PDF.) More specifically, the Court held that PDs are not state actors in the criminal justice system and that court-appointed attorneys should not be treated any differently than private counsel when assessing speedy trial violations.

Sadly, the good Justices demonstrated today that they live in a fantasy land when it comes to the 6th Amendment right to counsel. Their ruling would make complete sense if we lived in a world where appointed counsel had the same resources (primarily time, but also money) as private counsel. Sadly, we don’t live in that world. Instead, we live in a world where the State (embodied by state and county governments throughout this nation) has again and again and again made deliberate choices to provide court-appointed counsel as cheaply and minimally as possible. Therefore, treating court-appointed counsel the same as private counsel for purposes of speedy trial analysis is like treating a city bus and a motorcycle the same for getting you from one side of the city to the other. Sure, both can do the job, but one has many more obligations and demands upon it than the other.

That’s a far from perfect analogy, but the point remains that Brillon leaves a gaping in hole in the 6th Amendment for those defendants who get appointed counsel who are overworked and who delay their cases because of the State’s refusal to provide them with the resources to do their jobs adequately.

One solution to this is for public defenders to simply refuse to take cases when they know they are overloaded. Of course, by the time you realize you’re overloaded, it’s already too late; you’ve already got too many cases to adequately meet all deadlines and truly represent your clients.

So what does an indigent defendant do when his counsel just shovels his case along from continuance to continuance because counsel hasn’t had a chance to prepare the case? An Ineffective Assistance of Counsel claim can get a defendant new counsel or a new trial, but it does nothing to guarantee a speedy trial.

Posted in Crimlaw | 3 Comments » 262 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

Life in Chicago?

March 9th, 2009

This city has absolutely the worst roads I have ever driven on. Potholes everywhere, and once they start, they don’t seem to get filled until they’re deep and wide enough to swallow your wheel whole. Oh, the city pretends to fill them, but the “patches” last for about an hour.

So it’s great that we’ve got the El for an alternative to driving, right? Except, well, you might get stabbed and no one will even try to help you.

!?

Posted in Life | No Comments » 172 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

RB: MT p.d. work not recession-proof

March 5th, 2009
From Skelly quoting The AJB’s and Me:
…(T)he State of Montana Office of Public Defender may change how they handle their conflict cases, resulting in a significant decrease in the availability of contract work for us and many of our friends. Basically that’s like getting advance notice that layoffs are coming at your work… We naively thought we had pretty recession proof work because in hard times more people need public defenders…
Rah-roh, Raggy! Really? Anyone else heard anything like this? I have many friends who pay lots of their bills on conflict/contract work from the MT public defender’s office and I haven’t heard a thing from them about this, but maybe the rumor just hasn’t reached them yet?

Posted in Crimlaw, montana | 1 Comment » 311 views

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Loading ... Loading ...

« Previous Entries
Yet another in a long series of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility.
-- Chris Knight (Real Genius)


  • little imbroglios

  • Does Getting Angry Make You Angrier? : NPR:

    Apparently yes: The more you get angry, the angrier you get. @ Fascinating.

    #
  • Daring Fireball Linked List: 'Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable':

    Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. @

    #
  • The Defense Rests: The selective abandonment of moral hazard:

    So, let me get this straight, we are socializing the loss but privatizing the gain. While shareholders in the banks will be rewarded for the incompetence shown by their executives, taxpayers will be left holding worthless assets. Seems like a good deal, huh? @

    #
  • 100 Movies to See Before You Die - Yahoo!:

    @ I've seen about 50 of these and at least 25 more were already on that "I should probably see this" list. The rest? Not sure...

    #
  • Supreme Court Rejects ‘Nothing to Lose’ Standard for Ineffective Assistance Claim | ABA Journal:

    The opinion (PDF) by Justice Clarence Thomas said that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had improperly determined that the legal advice was ineffective because the lawyer had nothing to lose by offering the defense. @

    #
  • more little imbroglios...
  • countdown imbroglio

  • Recently Commented

    • 100 Movies to See Before You Die - Yahoo!
    • 62 Tabs!?
    • An evening with the ladies
    • Supreme Court Rejects ‘Nothing to Lose’ Standard for Ineffective Assistance Claim | ABA Journal
    • Thinking http://www.abovethela...
    • Don't call it schadenfreude...
    • Double-posting and other technical difficulties.
    • Hey Paul Krugman, where the hell are you, man?
    • What's Twitter good for?
  • library imbroglio

  • Planned books:

    • The Interpretation of Murder : A Novel by Jed Rubenfeld
    • Win Your Case: How to Present, Persuade, and Prevail-Every Place, Every Time by Gerry Spence
    • The Best Defense by Alan M. Dershowitz
    • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

    Current books:

    • Atonement: A Novel

      Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan

    • World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

      World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

    • In Our Defense

      In Our Defense by C Kennedy

    Recent books:

    • The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman
    • Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
    • Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
    • Deception Point by Dan Brown
    • Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian McEwan

    View full Library

  • movie imbroglio

    • Disturbia (2007) 6/10

      2008-03-29 20:34
      * * * * * *
      0.3
    • The Darjeeling Limited (2007) 6/10

      2008-03-27 18:30
      * * * * * *
      0.3
    • Dan in Real Life (2007) 6/10

      2008-03-23 09:59
      * * * * * *
      0.3
    • The Winslow Boy (1999) 3/10

      2007-07-15 09:56
      * * *
      0.3
    • Criminal (2004) 3/10

      2007-07-15 09:53
      * * *
      0.3
    • Red Eye (2005) 2/10

      2007-07-15 09:50
      * *
      0.3

    Movie ratings archive »

  • Archives

    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
  • Categories

    • ask-the-blog (12)
    • Bar exam (41)
    • Blogging (30)
    • Books (15)
    • Crimlaw (55)
    • Election 2008 (9)
    • Law school (14)
    • LawLaw (9)
    • Life (116)
    • little imbroglios (473)
    • Mid-terms06 (2)
    • montana (1)
    • Photo (6)
    • Politics (28)
    • popcult (7)
    • reviews (2)
    • Televisual (8)
    • tweets (200)
    • Uncategorized (3)
    • Writing (8)
  • Blogroll

  • crimlaw links

    • Audacity
    • Blonde Justice
    • Defending Those People
    • Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t
    • Gideon’s Guardians
    • Indefensible
    • Just Peachy
    • Malum In Se
    • Miss Conduct in Portland
    • MissTyrios
    • Mister District Attorney
    • Ninth Circuit Blog
    • Not Guilty
    • Public Defender Stuff
    • Woman of the Law
  • in the mix

    • Asian Provocateur
    • buzzwords
    • by the seat of my skirt
    • Concurring Opinions
    • divine angst
    • Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground
    • Half-Cocked
    • Jeremy Richey’s Blawg
    • Life, Law, Gender
    • LuminousVoid
    • Mackenzie’s Weblog
    • Mother In Law
    • OrinKerr.com
    • Peanut Butter Burrito
    • Preaching to the Perverted
    • Pretty Typewriters
    • Salon War Room
    • Screaming Bean
    • Sleepy Kid
    • super dilettante
    • The Disassociate
    • The Neutral Zone Trap
    • The Notion
    • thisdarkqualm
    • unblague
    • Washington Syndrome
    • Will Work for Favorable Dicta
    • WonL
  • law students

    • Random Ramblings About Life and Law School
  • pd award winners

    • Arbitrary and Capricious
    • Capital Defense Weekly
    • Doubtslinger
    • Ipse Dixit
    • Malum In Se
    • Public Defender Dude
    • Scoplaw
    • Second Circuit Blog
    • Swan Lake Samba Girl
    • Tales of A Public Defender Investigator
    • The Bardd Before The Bar
    • The Dream Antilles
    • The Rural Bus Route
    • Woman in Black
  • poptech pleasers

    • Daring Fireball
    • gapingvoid
    • Photojojo
    • Scripting News
    • the show with zefrank
    • The Unofficial Apple Weblog
  • Counter

    • 3 currently online
    • 11 maximum concurrent
    • 87176 total visitors
  • Syndicate

    • RSS Feed
    • Subscribe to Bloglines
    • Subscribe to MyYahoo!
    • Subscribe to Google Reader
    • Subscribe to MyMSN
    • Subscribe to Newsgator
    • Help with feeds

the imbroglio is proudly powered by WordPress
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).