FBA lunch this Wednesday

Judge John Gleeson is speaking at the Federal Bar Luncheon this Wednesday at the Banker's Club at 11:45. Please RSVP to Celeste Higgins at Celeste_Higgins@fd.org

Gleeson is a District Judge in the Eastern District of New York, and was a former federal prosecutor -- the same John Gleeson that prosecuted John Gotti.

Gotti's defense lawyer, Albert Krieger, will be in attendance. Should be fun...

Back from the West Coast

It was a fun week in San Francisco (I can't believe I missed the Father Cutié drama)...

I see the blog was in good hands while I was away. Rick was great and we hope to have him back on a regular basis.

Just a couple of quick hits before we get going for the week:

-- The Liberty City 6 jury (the latest version of it) will continue deliberating this week. That case is truly jinxed... (In his post on last week's LC6 happenings, Rick missed Mike Tein -- who, of course, is the most quotable lawyer in the District -- from the Blum article: "What a shameful waste of our taxes at the worst possible time. Just think what $10 million could have done for our schoolchildren in Liberty City.")

-- The District now has a Wiki page. It's interesting to look at the historical makeup of the Court. (Some trivia pointed out on the page: "This federal district has the dubious distinction of having had more judges removed through impeachment than any other district, with a total of two, one-third of all federal district judges so removed.")

-- Justice O'Connor had this to say about judicial elections: "They're awful. I hate them." More here.

-- Rick posted on the FIU faculty vote for Dean, and FIU law professor Howard Wasserman has a lot to say about the vote and the coverage here. Howard criticizes the open proceedings and compares it to watching sausages being made. Gotta disagree with Howard here -- we wanna know how sausages are made. Open proceedings are a good thing. Better to have the press in there and reporting (even if the coverage in this case wasn't complete) than the alternative of having the doors closed.

-- Rumpole demonstrates why the Ben Kuehne case needs to be dismissed.

D.O.M. canned me

Honestly, I don't know how D.O.M. does this and runs a practice. It's like being Dick Vitale and Coach K for the same game. Anyway, a week of wearing just one hat was nearly more than he could take. And this morning's little joke certainly didn't help. As soon as he saw that, my blogging was done. He was all, "You're totally out of hand," and, "You're not taking blogging seriously," and, "People depend on this," and the whole nine. I know, I know: It's like Stewart firing Colbert for being too silly, but he was pretty mad.

"Did you say you were going to apply to be U.S. Attorney?"

"I said I was thinking about—"

"And you're not going to apply, are you?"

"Of course not, but I'm pretty sure people got that."

"And did you not use my PACER account for a post about Paris Hilton?"

"Sure, but—"

"And did you not ignore all the comments from my readers?"

"Stop crossing me, D. I'm not some government agent," I said. "At least as far as you and Acosta know."

D.O.M. went slackjawed. He had the exact look that Carrie Underwood's boyfriend must have had when he saw what she did to his truck.

"What?" I said. "Too soon?"

Let's all get together for some legal research

Judge Gold set an evidentiary hearing for July 13th to sort out whether treaties or Swiss law prevent UBS from divulging account holder names to the IRS, reports the DBR. (The link is for subscribers only.) According to the article by John Pacenti, Gold ordered the Attorney General to explain by June 30th whether the IRS position is correct. Anyone making assertions about what Swiss law says needs to be in court for the hearing.

Game on

Dear Curt, David, and Willie—

I'm thinking about applying for that U.S. Attorney gig. I wanted you guys to hear it from me.