Addressing an audience of cadets barely older than my eldest son, President Obama took ownership of the war in Afghanistan and asked the people of the United States -- and our allies -- to give him a mulligan on the prosecution of that conflict.
We were, the President argued plausibly, doing [...]
Chris Soghoian posts a bombshell or two at slight paranoia: 8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight
Executive Summary
Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure [...]
Apparently, at Goldman, Sachs they're not just feeling the heat, they're packing it too:
“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for [...]
Glenn Greenwald labels Sen. Evan Bayh as The face of rotted Washington.
And not without reason.
[...]Via Cheerfully Demented, details of auctions in which winners get the right to be “Tuckerized” in novels by Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross, Nalo Hopkinson, David Brin, Elizabeth Bear, Julie Czerneda and Mary Robinette Kowal.
Tuckerizing is the inclusion [...]
Here's something to be grateful for: Feds drop money-laundering case against Miami lawyer Ben Kuehne.
Justice was done too slowly here. But at least it was done.
[...]I wrote the post below about Phil Agre seven weeks ago, but somehow never put it online. Now I read via the Great Grimmelmann that Phil Agre Is Missing and there is a web site dedicated to finding Phil Agre.
It seems I am not the only one [...]
UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files.
In the UK under the odious Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), if you are served with an order to disclose a passphrase to an encrypted file and you don't, you're guilty.
We saw this coming ten years ago,
Caspar Bowden, director [...]
UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files.
In the UK under the odious Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), if you are served with an order to disclose a passphrase to an encrypted file and you don't, you're guilty.
We saw this coming ten years ago,
Caspar Bowden, director [...]
Borders is having a bad time in the US - $39M Loss in Q3 - and seems to be going broke in the UK.
Which is a shame, as I find their book stores a lot nicer than Barnes & Noble, which always [...]
According to Marcel Berlins, English judges have never had gavels, despite what you routinely see on the BBC.
He is not amused.
(via The Magistrate's Blog)
(From SNL)
There's a lot that rings true in the broad-brush parts Matt Tabbi's latest screed although I take exception to the most vicious bits, like the line about Palin “having the brains of an innertube.”
No, Palin is [...]
We got our Swine Flu shots today — except the youngest, who had gotten the live nasal vaccine in school a few days ago.
The rest of us got the shots through UM, which is vaccinating employees and their children. The Sunday operation was run with extreme efficiency; we were in [...]
For a minute there I thought I'd gotten my first phishing email from Iran. But after a look at the headers, I think maybe not?
Received: from law.miami.edu ([172.16.8.69]) by EXCHVS.law.miami.edu with Microsoft SMTPSVC;
Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:28:14 -0500
Received: from ([194.225.184.9])
by mx-01.law.miami.edu with ESMTP id 5202001.34032630;
[...]
Here's what I did this afternoon:
More details at Soul of Miami and Sex and the Beach.
It was a good party - met Mustang Bobby and saw the Miami Beach 411 crowd — always the life of the party. Plus I met the [...]
Jonathan Simon writes that California's protesters should Strike Against Prisons not Education.
(Note: Jon wrote this before the latest round of protests.)
[...]Advocates of a 'plain meaning' approach to constitutional interpretation may have to conclude that Texas accidentally banned all marriage, as described in this McClatchy report, Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages
Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston' [...]
US News rankings are biased in ways that hurt the U. Miami Law; here's one I would guess is biased in our favor: 2010 Super Lawyers U.S. Law School Rankings by Super Lawyers magazine. They say we are #20 [...]
Jonathan Simon writes that California's protesters should Strike Against Prisons not Education.
(Note: Jon wrote this before the latest round of protests.)
[...]Had a very good time at the OII, had an especially fun seminar with some of the students.
Now I'm back, wading through huge stacks of things that piled up while I was away. No bloggy substance till I make a dent in the piles.
[...]I gave my Oxford-sponsored talk in London today; people said nice things after, so I guess it was OK. I had forgotten how much more US audiences indicate by noise and body language whether they like talks. A British audience is far more polite, but also far more reserved; words [...]
The UK papers are all, ahem, a-Twitter, about this story: Scientist announces that she is call girl and blogger Belle de Jour.
It seems that one of the leading 'sex bloggers' in the UK [...]
Let me just say that I am never checking a bag through CDG again.
I had a 1 hour 40 minute connection, which became a little over one hour connection when the plane was late.
I made it. The bag did not. The very very nice and cheerful man at LHR [...]
Because I'll Be Speaking in London on Nov. 17, I need to be in London.
So I'm currently at MIA (memo to self: never, ever take the terminal D security line no mater how short it looks in order to get to terminal E — longest detour in airport history), [...]
The Houseguest points me to the customer reviews at Amazon for the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk: Electronics.
Many creative uses.
[...]I asked previously why no one was asking about an exit strategy for Afghanistan.
Well, it seems that someone important is asking that hard question.
[...]TMP runs the story of Hannity's apology as Cold Day in Hell.
Hannity claims it was an “inadvertent” error. (See Hannity = Dishonesty for background.)
Now on his program last night he mentioned that we had played some incorrect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican [...]
I have a house guest who is probably one of the few teetotal geek folksinger freelance journalists in captivity.
The guest described to me a potentially useful feature of Tweetdeck that I didn't know existed (dividing people you follow into 'groups'), so I fired it up. (I don't use Twitter very [...]
The most amazing thing about this story is that I think no one will care.
Jon Stewart catches out Fox propagandist Hannity in a stunning piece of dishonesty, one that could not possibly be accidental. In any normal democracy with a well-functioning press and political culture, this sort of neo-Goebbelian manipulation [...]
From EFF's Secret Files: Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena
Stuff like this is why I'm proud to be on EFF's Advisory Board. (Although I can claim zero credit for EFF's great work on this matter.)
Here's a [...]
Joho the Blog, Line from a conf:
“There is a way to herd cats: Move their food.” — speaker at a closed conf
[...]
James Grimmelmann has a nice piece up on Jotwell called Third Parties to the Rescue.
Here's how it starts:Michael Risch’s Virtual Third Parties, 25 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech. L.J. 416 (2009) tips the scales at [...]
Nice article in today's Herald about the UM law foreclosure fellows program, New lawyers help fight foreclosures.
I got quoted as saying,
“When the foreclosure happens, the number of important legal defenses that may be available are not always obvious to [...]
I don't know why I had to read this on Above the Law (no, not that), but it seems that UM Law school is implementing a very good change in the tuition structure which will ensure our students can take language (and other) courses in the University without extra charge. [...]
I confess, I am a fan of the (original) Prisoner. I am not the fanatical sort of fan, just one who has seen them all at least twice. I recognize they are dated. I admit the ending of the series is mostly stupid, and what is not stupid is mostly [...]
Today is the official launch of Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), a new online law journal that I am editing. At Jotwell you will find leading academics and practitioners providing short reviews of recent scholarship related to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves [...]
Economist.com, Democracy in America, Seven questions for Dan Froomkin
My favorite of the seven:
DIA: Much of Huffington Post’s traffic is driven by gossipy stories about sex and entertainment. Are you concerned about the effect this has on the [...]
Almost forgot to post this Halloween pix — we had a guest lecturer in Torts class. A number of students also dressed as someone (or maybe his) familiar.
[...]Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots) seeks short reviews of (very) recent scholarship related to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves a wide audience. The ideal Jotwell review will not merely celebrate scholarly achievement, but situate it in the context of other scholarship in [...]
RC3 has proposed a new Corollary to Zawinski's law.
Zawinski’s law states: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.I wonder if there’s a corollary that applies to imperialism.
Every [...]Exit Strategy: The two words that you don't hear anymore in the Afghanistan policy debate.
Where did they go?
[...]
One of my students, Eric Neff, tells me he has “carved a pumpkin in my image” and sends along this photo of the “frumpkin”:
I think it looks more like one of the Marx Brothers….
In an email to the entire UM Community, UM Pres. Donna Shalala writes,
To the University Community:
On Tuesday someone drew a swastika on a wall in the men's restroom near the Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies in the Merrick Building. This incident and a similar one that occurred last [...]
Homeland Security Watch turns the mike over to the former Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police in 'Do I have the right to refuse this search?' and she suggests that there are [...]
