I have to stop reading the news; it only reminds me that the world is going straight to hell in an American-made handbasket. Exhibit A:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

Thank goodness that “war on terra” is going so well!

Closer to home, I recently lost a probation violation hearing where we were asking the court to excuse my client’s failure to complete her restitution payments by the end of her sentence because my client had made a good faith effort to pay. The law says that failure to pay restitution must be excused if you’ve made a good faith effort because your obligation to pay remains with you for life, the “victim” has civil remedies for collection, and the state can garnish wages and tax returns to ensure you complete your restitution regardless of whether you’re on probation. So we had testimony that my client has worked a low-wage job throughout probation, working 32-35 hours/wk, which is all the employer would give her. She paid about 20 out of 36 months, she moved her family to a cheaper apartment to save money, her husband was in jail through part of the time and so could not contribute to household expenses for her and her two kids, plus when he was out he had his own considerable restitution to pay in an unrelated matter, etc. Finally, we had evidence that during this period, creditors brought three separate collection actions against my client for debts she and her husband incurred prior to the time this restitution was ordered, so for most of the time she was supposed to pay restitution her wages were being garnished for other debts.

Of course, after all of this, the court said, “You could have tried harder! You have cable tv and your son has internet.’ (Testimony was that son pays for the internet himself.) “You should have sold your tv and skipped those luxuries to prioritize restitution.” The court revoked my client’s sentence and started it over again. Awesome. I have a suggestion: Why doesn’t my client stop paying rent and move into a shelter so that much more of her income can go to restitution! That would really be trying, wouldn’t it?

What else? Oh, I recently learned that two of my “favorite” judges have very interesting “pet peeves.” One of them says his pet peeve is lawyers who can’t control their clients and waste his time at hearings they are totally going to lose. Great, so we should just ignore the fact that even if this judge denies the motion, an appellate court might very well rule the other way? It sounds to me like he’s saying that attorneys making a record for appeal and/or fighting for every possible hope their clients might have are wasting his time and annoying him. This from a judge who also recently asked me in an off-the-record pre-trial status conference, “Why doesn’t your client just plead guilty?”

Another judge’s pet peeve was cross examination. “It takes too long and just repeats the state’s case, so why are you wasting my time?” (I’m obviously paraphrasing.) So the judge is saying that his pet peeve is the entire defense case!? How often do we end up going to trial w/nothing but cross to make our case!? I don’t believe this judge was ever a defense attorney and it’s pretty clear he never prepared a cross-examination of a key witness, yet I have to practice in front of him on a regular basis. Grrrrrrr!

The song on constant rotation these days is Why Do I Keep Counting by The Killers. I mean, really, if all of our days are numbered…??

Big firm associates are apparently “lost” and “unhappy.” Don’t you feel sorry for them? Things sort of sound especially bad at Jenner & Block, which does make me sad, actually.¹ All of us unhappy lawyers could become teachers, concrete artists, or rappers. Concrete really does offer endless possibilities.

Tip: Don’t lie to judges.

Tip2: Macs are so much better than PCs it’s amazing people even have to keep asking this silly question. Macs can even let you take law school exams these days!

Don’t you think a lot can be explained by the fact that there are drugs in our water?

1. Apologies to my friends at big firms; I know it sucks. Might I suggest a career in public interest law? No money, but lots more satisfaction! Maybe…↩

Apropos of nothing, I went to a big going out of business auction last weekend. It was a pawn shop so they were selling a little bit of everything. The real reason I was there were the scooters and motorcycles for sale. Some of them have been parked out front for weeks and months and I have walked by them a hundred times, wishing, wishing. So I was really hoping they’d go for nothing. I was mistaken. The 2000? Honda ST1100 w/something like 24k miles went for $4k. The 2003 Honda Silver Wing w/about 6k miles? (looked almost brand new) went for $2400, and the beat up old (1995?) Honda Helix w/20k miles went for $900. By my humble researches, those were all about 50% of market value, except for maybe the Helix, which was in bad shape and should not have gone for so much (I thought).

My dad’s a big auction fan and each time I go to one I’m reminded of why people like them. It’s fun to check out the merchandise and wonder about what it will go for, and it’s exciting to get into the bidding for something you want. It’s also this strange sort of honor system culture where anyone can sign up for a number and bid, no questions asked (other than name, address, and phone number). Where else can you stand up and declare you’re going to pay $5k for something w/out anyone asking to see some kind of proof beforehand that you’re actually good for it? I could get into big trouble that way, but still, it’s kind of a neat thing.

I still have that scooter jones, though. If I’d had an extra $900, that Helix would have been mine! My grandpa had what turns out to be a rather rare 1984 Honda Elite 125 (rare because it was a 125 for only one year before they made it a 150, apparently w/o much of a performance gain). It’s been sitting in my dad’s garage for probably close to a decade now, but it apparently has title and ownership issues. Really I keep making this vow to stop wanting things I can’t afford and this would be one of them. Nose to the grindstone, pay those loans, get back to work. Yadda 2x.

In the comments to a news article describing how a man was beaten badly by two other men after stopping them from raping a woman we find a fierce debate about that to do w/the “trash” (poor and homeless people) who live and hang out downtown and on the south side of town. From that debate comes this paean to capitalism:

People Please!!! The porblem is not the skate park, it has nothing to do with the skate park. It has nothing to do with the kids. We are all good, caring & providing parents. The problem is the “trash” on the south side. Call me and think of me what you want, that is fine. I have a solution. If the population of the “do gooders” want to help the “trash” so much then let them. We should be able to have a deduction on our taxes for the welfare that is given out. Those who want to help, the “do gooders”, then can pay for it. They then could have this deduction taken from their money. The ones who care about and take care of the ones they love can keep their money and spend it on the ones they care for and love. We would really see the “do gooders” numbers decline! I am sick of hand outs! This is America, you get what you work for.

That self-righteous screed could also be characterized as vulgar selfishness, racism, and ignorance, but really aren’t those just natural byproducts of our wonderful capitalist society?

Contrast with this explanation of freeganism:

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

Hmm.

Wishbone Restaurant

Originally uploaded by ambimb

Way back in 2005 I was in Chicago w/L and her family and her sister took us to the Wishbone cafe. Now my snap of the place has made it into the Scmapp! Chicago interactive map/travel guide. Cool. Great place for breakfast, too.

Ok. I have a problem. I see lots of links and cool things online I’d like to read, link to, or otherwise enjoy, so I open them in tabs in Firefox. And then I see more cool things and open them, too. And then I end up w/62 open tabs and my poor little G4 iBook says, “What do I look like, a brand new Mac Pro?” So, here’s what’s getting closed (and trust me, you don’t want to read what follows unless you’re insanely bored; it was just something I had to do, some housecleaning, really. You don’t normally want to watch someone clean house, do you?):

1. Confessions of a Burned Out Ex-Lawyer, an online novel/book I began reading months ago and to which I hope to return. I might have posted about it before but I really can’t recall. Great reading, though.
2. The Underdog Blog’s comments on Barry Cooper’s Never Get Busted video. Looks like Cooper was the model of a bad cop. So is he different simply because he admitted he didn’t care about the law?
3. Twitter, because it’s basically always open these days, just in case.
4. Reasons prosecutors make me scream from Woman of the Law. Ditto! Amen, sister! One prosecutor in particular is always telling me how well he knows my clients — he seems to think he’s their best friend, he knows exactly what’s wrong with their lives and boy, does he know how to fix it! One of these days I’m probably going to punch him. If I don’t, somebody else will.
5. A January 15 NPR story on the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments about an illegal search. I can’t seem to make NPR’s media player work at the moment, but I know it was a very interesting story, really. I promise.
6. MOO MiniCards— I really want to order some of these and start giving them out instead of my normal boring business cards. On the back I’d like to print an advice of rights so my clients can keep my card and give it to the cops the next time they meet them. ;-)
7. The Vow of Stability, a link I followed from my best friend’s blog. It’s a compendium of thoughts on travel, most tending along the lines of the following from R.W. Emerson:
   

   Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

   Sadly, I have not really had the opportunity to travel in close to a decade. I know Emerson is largely right (wherever you go, there you are), but still, my giant needs some air once in a while and it’s really beginning to feel like it’s time….

8. Doubtslinger, both because it’s always good, and because I read it on my Treo daily and often just want to check out the real thing. And also, could there be a better name for a public defender blog? I, um, doubt it. (Please, though, why must people use black backgrounds!? Why why why? My eyes!)
9. Don’t do what I did: An ABA Journal article about a 32-year old law school graduate crusading to convince people that they should not go to law school because the debt they will incur will shackle them to decades of servitude and they will be miserable and stressed and wishing they were dead. (I might be exaggerating.) Some interesting discussion in the 200 comments… (Yeah, I posted about this before.)
10. The ABA Criminal Justice Blawg Directory. I commented on this before, too. Both tabs now closed, I swear!
11. tough loss, a post from 1/10/08 on Curia Advisari Vult about how hard it is to lose when you are absolutely convinced of your client’s innocence. Tough, indeed.
12. An obscure comment on Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t about whether the Montana Rules of Ethics actually allow a lawyer to get paid for referrals.
13. LibraryThing, which looks like a pretty cool way to catalog the books you’ve read or want to read or own. It also integrates nicely with blogs so you can easily share your catalog…
14. War on Greed, a campaign to get presidential candidates to commit to closing tax loopholes that allow rich executives to pay less in taxes than do their impoverished employees.
15. QOOP flickr fun — many different ways to turn your photos into cool stuff.
16. Taking Care of Business, a book about the myriad evils associated w/the fact that corporations are treated as “individuals” w/rights by American law.
17. A Rookie Guide to Digital SLR Cameras, because, well, I just was curious.
18. Host, the David Foster Wallace essay I mentioned before and still haven’t read.
19. Why I Do What I Do from The Saucy Vixen on Life on how tiresome it is to have to explain the work of a public defender and the one argument that actually works: “by defending the rights of the indigent, my cohorts and I are defending the rights of everyone.” Exactly so.
20. An iPod charger/FM broadcaster from Buy.com that was only $12 when I first looked at it, and has now jumped to $32. :-(
21. A Reader’s Guide to Infinite Jest from Amazon.com, because I still sometimes dream about being pseudo-scholarly.
22. Elegant Complexity, a study of Infinite Jest, because, again, yeah, like I have the time.
23. I know what you’ve been convicted of from the blog, “a public defender,” on the merits of putting all criminal records online in searchable format for anyone to browse on a whim. Generally not at all what I think was intended by the idea of making criminal records “public.”
24. 500 GB hard drive I’ve been thinking of ordering b/c it’s a good deal and I need more storage. I have nightmares about hard drives crashing and not having backups…
25. Journler, a journal application that looks pretty cool, if you don’t already have something like this.
26. Shawn Blanc’s review of MarsEdit, a desktop blog publishing app.
27. cameron i/o, a tumblelog that’s using the new chyrp blogging engine (see below). It’s a different way to blog, and perhaps more appropriate for what I find myself having time for these days. Experiments forthcoming, maybe.
28. Chyrp. You know you want to.
29. Amazon’s Best Books of 2007, as if I have time for that. See, lots of these links are about dreaming, aspirations, hopes, tangents, ephemera…
30. Amazon magazine deals because I was thinking of subscribing to some magazines for our office’s waiting room.
31. Snopes.com on Barack Obama — a friend told me he’s afraid of Obama being a muslim terrorist b/c of what he read on Snopes.com, so I wanted to see it for myself. It’s largely a fabrication and a smear. Obama is most certainly not muslim, although his father was.
32. Another smear that Obama is Muslim, found in the same search session as above.
33. Obama’s own website on whether he is a Muslim: No.
34. FactCheck.org says Obama is not and never has been a muslim.
35. Not for Sheep, because puppies are cute, super villains are cool, and my website is 75% evil.
36. The source of the black heart I posted on V-day.
37. Apparently we’re all liars: Another great post from Woman of the Law on the many frustrations and aggravations of being a public defender.
38. Be the Boy, a blog I reached only god knows how.
39. Myths and falsehoods about Barack Obama from Media Matters.
40. Law & Order SVU Valentines. Sadly I didn’t find these until after V-day….
41. Blonde Justice, an Explanation, in which she discusses how her move from public defender to private practice has been very much disappointing. It’s striking because I never would have dreamed from her posts while she was a PD that she was at all depressed or unhappy; perhaps she’s right that she needs to get back to doing what has meaning for her.

You know what? That’s so more than enough. You’ll just have to trust me that there were 62 tabs open. Thbbpt!

As twitter followers and rss readers already know, I finally won a jury trial yesterday! Whoohoo! It was a two-witness, felony DUI trial that turned into a 2-day affair. The second day started w/closing arguments, then the jury began deliberating … and asking questions — seven of them. Jurors kept wanting more information but the judge kept telling them to rely on the evidence presented. Finally, after four hours, they came back w/the Not Guilty!

The clerk read the verdict: “We the jury, duly impaneled and sworn, do hereby find the defendant Not Guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol.”

It’s hard to think of other moments in life that could be better than those seconds right before the actual verdict, the verdict itself, and then the next second where you can actually exhale. It happened so fast I could barely believe it was real.

Obviously, this was terrific news for my client, but also for me. It was a huge relief because, if the verdict had been guilty, my client would have been subject to our 2-strikes law and a mandatory minimum 5-life in prison. (I kid you not.) So obviously it’s terrific that he no longer has that hanging over his head. But it’s also a huge relief for me personally because, well, basically it proves I can win at trial. I know it won’t happen every time, or even most of the time, but it’s just good to know that it can happen. And I know that there are many skills necessary to be a good public defender, trial isn’t the only measure of success by a long shot, etc. I know all that. But I also know that it feels really good to win. ;-)

The Bush Administration is trying to convince Congress and the rest of us that it needs permanent permission to spy on on us, and that the telecom industry should have retroactive protection from liability for their actions in helping the gov’t spy on us. How are they trying to convince us of that this is necessary? In this story the sales pitch goes like this: Everything the government and the telecom companies are doing and have done is legal now and always has been, but we have to pass this new law so we can make sure everything the government and the telecom companies are doing and have done is legal now and always has been.

Right.

p.s.: I see that I called yesterday “black tuesday.” It was obviously Thursday. Oops.

Happy Vday everyone. May your black hearts beat strong and long.

It’s been wintry freezing cold here and I have not been able to rise and shine in the mornings at all. Three bangs on the snooze bar, minimum, every morning, even when I went to bed early the night before. I think I am related to bears. Call Stephen Colbert!

Randomness:

• Life is always busy, so why can’t I ever post anything here? Maybe Audacity had the right idea.
• Amazon has magazine subscriptions on sale. The magazines in my office’s waiting room are four years old. Should I gift a subscription to my office? If so, what would my clients like to read while they wait to see me?
• Chyrp is a new blogging/tumblelogging platform I just learned about. Looks cool.
• I also just learned about this essay by David Foster Wallace from 2005. I’d like to read it but since law school I don’t think I’m smart enough to read Wallace anymore. Law school is a good way to make stupid.
• I spent two days last week at union meetings and they also made me stupid. If I were a poet I would write a poem called “Union Negotiations” and it would be all about freezing temperatures, a world frozen solid so that sound carries for miles w/no meaning, buffeted and interrupted by the howling wind. It’s lucky for you I am not a poet.
• The writer’s strike may be over and that makes me both happy and sad. The strike was depressing to me, but mostly because it went on so long w/so little impact. It seemed to me yet another sign of the waning power of collective action and unions in general. I hope I am wrong.
• I wish I could tell you which sucks more: Mean people or selfish people? Many times meanness and selfishness are the same thing.