My wife and children and friend are all stranded by flash flooding in a strip mall parking lot out in Metarie and here I sit, also stranded (lacking a car and a desire to walk out in the pouring rain) in a coffee shop on Magazine.
At least I was able [...]
H/t to Dr. X, where there’s a description of what brought about the fall of this brand-new building. They’re in a bit of a hurry over there in China.
[...]As I’ve repeatedly said, I think the defendants in U.S. v. Minor won a large victory before the Fifth Circuit. And, to reach the dispositive issue, the Fifth Circuit had to rule that it would be an injustice to not decide the issue under its plain error rules.
But for almost [...]
This sentence caught my eye:
Contacted for comment, U.S. Attorney Don Burkhalter said his office has been recused from the case and he couldn’t comment.
As I understood it, Dunn Lampton recused himself from the case, but the S.D. Miss. office continued to prosecute. When did the whole office get recused? [...]
Updated twice, below.
Reading through the Paul Minor opinion yesterday, I was struck by the issue that wasn’t there– the dog that didn’t bark– a question about “honest services” mail fraud.
Recall that there’s a statute that says that denial of honest services can be the basis of a mail fraud [...]
In my project of writing about the Mississippi Supreme Court decisions list, I missed the 3rd and last Thursday. This post will cover those, and there’s a note at the end of the post about what I’ve hit and missed since the first of the year; I’ve described most of [...]
Update: I’ve changed the hearing from “overturns all bribery convictions” to “overturns all federal program bribery convictions.” The difference should become clear as you read the post. The opinion overturns the bribery conviction under 18 USC §666 but leaves standing the mail fraud conviction– a component of which is a [...]
The Mississippi Business Journal reporter, after reading Steve Seale’s comment that a reporter should call-before-he-writes, the reporter called Seale, and then wrote about the conversation:
Jackson Attorney Steve Seale was in the audience yesterday when Alan Lange and Tom Dawson, the authors of “Kings of Tort”, talked about their new [...]
… and sparks flew. Mississippi Business Journal has a great account of Kings of Torts authors Lange and Dawson being questioned by Steve Seale, a Jackson lawyer and former Lott aide:
The monthly luncheon of the Stennis Capitol Press Corps is usually a calm affair. A speaker gives a presentation, [...]
Tom Dawson and Bob Norman got Justice Department awards for their work in Scruggs I and Scruggs II. An article describing all the award winners is on the Main Justice website, here. The citation for their award reads:
Thomas W. Dawson and Bob Norman (Northern District of Mississippi) for their outstanding [...]
Not sure what else to say about that. Maybe Roger wanted to see the mermaid statue.
[...]Tomorrow at 7:05 AM three Mississippi Supreme Court Justices– in order of seniority, George Carlson, Ann Lamar, and Bubba Pierce– will be on the Gallo Show on Super Talk Mississippi. They’ll address:
The State budget, and how it plays on Mississippi’s Justice System.
How the justices come to consensus on casess
Justice Lamar [...]
The Main Justice has broken an interesting story (since picked up by the NY Times and TalkingPoints, along with Volkh Conspiracy) that suggested a lot of tangents to me– the Washington insider’s sense of entitlement, junk science and “shaken baby syndrome,” my dislike of Max Baucus, [...]
Compare–
The later is from the 1912 book Bacon and Hams, which these guys at the French Culinary Institute is the best book ever on the subject. The Culinary Institute bloggers also scanned and made a Flash animation of the beautiful frontispiece from [...]
The parts of the book that are from Dawson’s perspective (not written in first person, but sufficiently personal that it talks about what he thought) have an insider’s view of how the decisions were made in the investigation and in plea bargaining. There is some newsworthy stuff in the November-December [...]
Dean Davis has sent this email to the law students at Ole Miss law school:
This year marks the last year of my third term as Dean of the School of Law. After much reflection and discussion with both the Chancellor and the Provost, I have decided that this year will [...]
There’s been an interesting document dump for folks interested in understanding the ins-and-outs of the Wilson v. Scruggs litigation, one that, given recent settlements, I was wondering if we’d ever get to see. What we got today were expert reports from Wilson’s side about how they would have calculated Wilson’s [...]
I thought it had been discussed a bit in comments, and my baseball post was a tongue-in-cheek ducking of the subject.
Just for the record, I my posts have not been limited to after-the-fact glee. They’ve contained foreboding and meditation on having hopes crushed, about dizzying falls from grace [...]
Patsy Brumfield has a couple of tw0-years-on thumb sucking pieces about the Scruggs scandals in the Daily Journal today. One focuses on the state bar leadership with some notes about the law school graduates of the last two years, and the other on law professor Ben Cooper’s ethics [...]
… and instead contemplate the infamous no hitter Doc Ellis pitched while tripping on LSD in 1970. Here’s an animated short with him telling the story in his own words.
Click here to view the embedded video.
h/t Bill Gregg
[...]A quiet afternoon of reading cases, eating turkey sandwiches, and half-watching some football. Saw Oxford’s own Justin Woodall draw an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty (picked off an Auburn pass then threw away in a temper fit when he realized the play had been called dead and his interception was for naught). [...]
Sam Sifton is the 911-blogger for Thanksgiving tomorrow morning at the NY Times food blog. Here’s what he’s offering:
The New York Times Thanksgiving Help Desk will open for business tomorrow morning at 7. I will be sitting at its w, armed with coffee, reference books, source lists, phone lists [...]
Yesterday, I noted Sam Sifton’s warning about how brining the turkey can lead to an explosion. Today, some research on the subject from the folks at Underwriters Laboratory.
Click here to view the embedded video.
[...]Since last May, I’ve been writing about arrests in Jones County, Mississippi of several travelers who write on the site MotorHomeDiaries.Com. They were stopped while passing through. They were arrested under a typically wrongheaded and vague use of the disorderly conduct statute, charged with failure to follow the lawful [...]
The options for state bar commissioner for the 3rd District are Thomas Dawson, former prosecutor of Tim Balducci, and Ken Smith, former law partner of Tim Balducci.
[...]I’m enjoying the hell out of Sam Sifton’s blogging on the NYTimes food blog (he’s also started off well and vividly as the Times’ new restaurant critic). This week, he’s doing Q&A on Thanksgiving dinner, and warns of (some of) the hazards of frying a turkey:
Q. I’ve heard suggestions of [...]Jerry Mitchell had an interesting pair of stories about the possibility of further prosecutions for the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in Philadelphia in 1964.
Recall a while back Jerry Mitchell had a story about a former inmate who had material for a tell-all book based [...]
So life is interferring with the internet– I spent five hours today at a school hearing, and come out to deal with all the other stuff accumulating while I’m tied up, and learn…
…a bartender at the City Grocery says that the betting line in Vegas opened with Ole Miss the [...]
– that George Clinton owns “Bow wow wow yippie yo yippie yeah,” thanks to Atomic Dog
Click here to view the embedded video.
It seems that a rap group on the Universal label had a song about a dog that used the phrase from “Atomic Dog,” and the Sixth Circuit [...]
I’ve already posted about the Mississippi Supreme Court opinion in the Jones, Funderburg case (and one reaction to it) from last Thursday’s decisions list. There are several more opinions; I’m going to hold comment on one about state government and about a criminal case with a short order; below are [...]
Some people may have overreacted to those orange-wearing visitors.
Click here to view the embedded video.
h/t Kingfish.
[...]I noticed all these people in orange, and thought: What does this remind me of?
My first thought was pumpkins, two weeks late for Halloween.
Nope. That’s not it. Then I realized what I was seeing: This is the color of county prisoners in jump suits, out doing pick-up on the highways.
It [...]
The Clarion Ledger has a story about Robert Johnson’s birthplace in Hazelhurst. Local officials claim to have discovered it:
His birthplace, however, has been verified. The seminal bluesman came into the world in 1911 in a well-crafted home built by his stepfather in Hazlehurst.
Now, 71 years after his death, local [...]
Grady Tollison writes:
As I read Barrett, et al. v. Jones, Funderburg, Sessums, Peterson and Lee, PLLC, the only interpretation is that if a group of lawyers acting in concert in the collective interest of the group moves the court collectively to move a case to arbitration as the act of [...]
This afternoon, Judge Davidson sentenced Bobby DeLaughter to 18 months (and granted his request that he ask the Bureau of Prisons for either Montgomery or Pensacola).
There was no real news. DeLaughter’s lawyer, Tom Durkin, apologized, which DeLaughter repeated in his brief statement. In imposing sentence, Judge Davidson stated, “I conclude [...]
Well, so says Steve Patterson in a pleading filed Wednesday:
In July 2009, when Scruggs was being temporarily held in Atlanta, Georgia, where Patterson and Scruggs were both in transition to Oxford, Mississippi as witnesses for the DeLaughter trial, Scruggs, on repeated occasions, told Patterson that he was going to settle [...]
The Daily Journal reports about the Wilson v. Scruggs settlement:
The lead attorney, Charles Merkel of Clarksdale, was more specific.
“We’re in the process of wrapping it up against the Scruggses and their companies,” he said late Thursday. “Justice was finally served.”
Defendants in the latest incarnation also included former Hinds District [...]
A great deal of Scruggs news in the papers today.
Jerry Mitchell’s story about this afternoon’s DeLaughter sentencing presents two views of what is happening. In the predominant one, Judge DeLaughter was a fine public servant (or even hero) brought low by one mistake. He looks first to Professor Steffey [...]
Recall that the Jones v. Scruggs case is on appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court about whether to uphold sanctions against Scruggs Katrina Group joint venturers Lovelace law firm, Don Barrett and Barrett’s firm. Scruggs and his firm and David Nutt and his firm had earlier settled with Jones, leaving [...]
Tomorrow, Bobby DeLaughter is being sentenced in Judge Davidson’s courtroom.
Today, the Daily Journal is reporting that Wilson v. Scruggs— the case in which the illegal approaches to DeLaughter occurred– has “mostly settled,” with Wilson’s lawyer Charlie Merkel as the source:
UPDATE: Wilson v. Scruggs lawsuit settled – mostly by Patsy Brumfield/Daily [...]This was the president’s speech:
THE PRESIDENT: To the Fort Hood community; to Admiral Mullen; General Casey; General Cone; Secretary McHugh; Secretary Gates; most importantly, to family, friends and members of our Armed Forces. We come together filled with sorrow for the 13 Americans that we have lost; with gratitude [...]
If people don’t start
RETURNING THE MILK BOTTLES NOWthe Browns will be unable to continue selling milk to the general public! They have 1600 bottles out and less than 20 empty awaiting milk!
The Browns are selling milk at MidTown Shopping Center every Wednesday [...]
James Fallows has been writing about what he calls “security theater” from the Transportation Safety Administration, efforts that are designed to show the illusion of effort for security rather than actually increasing security.
Today, he posted about a Washington Post story about an effort by the TSA [...]
Judge Biggers entered an opinion dismissing the prosecution against Judge Dr. Weiner. There’s a lot of news at the level of put-the-cards-on-the-table; he talks about the ways that the Mann Act was used against unpopular political targets (Jack Johnson, Charlie Chaplin). And then there’s this, explaining the prosecution in terms [...]
