Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Monday, September 24, 2007

National news

Some interesting stuff in the papers:

1. John Paul Stevens is interviewed. (NY Times; Hat tip Rumpole). This is a fantastic article. One quote from the Justice who spends a ton of time in this District: “I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all. I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.” He also explained this funny story:

Stevens also distinguished himself as the only justice to spend a substantial part of each Supreme Court term away from Washington. He and his wife have a condominium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and they spend two weeks a month there from November through April. ...“I do much more work in Florida than I do here,” Stevens told me, looking contented. He sometimes reads briefs on the beach. “One of my favorite memories is the time I was sitting” on the Supreme Court bench in Washington just after returning from Florida, he recalled. “I shook the sand out of the brief!”


2 . The job market isn't so great for law grads (WSJ; Hat tip WSJ blog)

3. District Judge Paul Cassell has resigned. (Sentencing Law & Policy)

West Palm movers

Julie Kay highlights this morning lots of movers and shakers in WPB. Notably Rolando Garcia has been named head of the West Palm Beach office of the u.S. attorney's office, where the numbers of cases is way up.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Blog change

I started this blog as a fun way to cover the Southern District of Florida, a court that I love.

During the past week, a number of comments (on this blog and others) and posts on other blogs have made it not so fun. I can't control other blogs and their comments, although I have tried to get the offending blogger to delete his inappropriate post. I even deleted the post about which he was commenting, but he now is linking to the cached page from Google, which I cannot control.

But I can control this blog's comments. I have changed the blog so that you cannot post anonymously anymore. I will delete any mean comment or any comment which I feel is inappropriate.

Anyway, sorry for this post -- but I feel strongly that the blog shouldn't be used to make people feel bad.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Friday afternoon fun

Some funny stories reported around the blogosphere today:

1. James Muirhead, a federal magistrate in New Hampshire, wrote a very funny order today based on Green Eggs and Ham after an inmate filed a lawsuit based on the food he was being served and attached an actual egg to the pleading. Here's part:

“I do not like eggs in the file. I do not like them in any style. I will not take them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached or broiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled Despite an argument well-rambled.” Thre rest of the order here.

2. Judge Posner, from the 7th Circuit, wrote an order about horse meat in which the court upheld an Illinois law making it unlawful to “slaughter a horse if that person knows or should know that any of the horse meat will be used for human consumption.” Here's the initial paragraph:

Horse meat was until recently an accepted part of the American diet—the Harvard Faculty Club served horse-meat steaks until the 1970s. No longer is horse meat eaten by Americans . . . though it is eaten by people in a number of other countries, including countries in Europe; in some countries it is a delicacy. Meat from American horses is especially prized because our ample grazing land enables them to eat natural grasses, which enhances the flavor of their meat.


Check out page 11 -- which includes a picture of a lion eating a horse meat cake. No kidding. Here it is:




hat tips -- Wall Street Journal Blog and Above the Law.