My Apologies

Sorry for being gone the last couple days.

I will get back to blogging soon.

In the meantime -- it's March Madness. If you want to win a Supreme Court bobblehead, fill out your brackets here. Quickly!

Or catch up on all the recent cert grants in the Supreme Court (and the Heller arguments).

Of note to many of you -- the Miami Zuckerman Spaeder office has closed as everyone has bolted. Mike Pasano, Steve Bronis, Paul Calli, Tom Meeks, Walter Tache, and Marissel Descalzo are headed to Carlton Fields. Not sure where the other Miami Zuckerman lawyers are headed.

Greenberg Traurig indicted...

...in Guam (via ABA Journal).

It relates to the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Dersh on Spitzer

Here is Professor Alan Dershowitz's take on the Eliot Spitzer case. I post it because it is very different than the way most of us feel about Mr. Spitzer. Here's a snippet:

The federal criminal investigation that has led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York illustrates the great dangers all Americans face from vague and open-ended sex and money-transaction statutes.
Federal law, if read broadly, criminalizes virtually all sexual encounters for which something of value has been given. Federal money-laundering statutes criminalize many entirely legitimate and conventional banking transactions. Congress enacted these laws to give federal prosecutors wide discretion in deciding which "bad guys" to go after.
Generally, wise and intelligent prosecutors use their discretion properly -- to target organized crime, terrorism, financial predation, exploitation of children and the like. But the very existence of these selectively enforced statutes poses grave dangers of abuse. They lie around like loaded guns waiting to be used against the enemies of politically motivated investigators, prosecutors and politicians.

He concludes:

Lavrenti Beria, the head of Joseph Stalin's KGB, once quipped to his boss, "show me the man and I will find the crime." The Soviet Union was notorious for having accordion-like criminal laws that could be adjusted to fit almost any dissident target. The U.S. is a far cry from the Soviet Union, but our laws are dangerously overbroad.

Both Democrats and Republicans have targeted political adversaries over the years. The weapons of choice are almost always elastic criminal laws. And few laws are more elastic, and susceptible to abuse, than federal laws on money laundering and sex crimes. For the sake of all Americans, these laws should be narrowed and limited to predatory crimes with real victims.


Thoughts?

Judge Marcia Cooke speaks at the Federal Bar luncheon

While everyone else is wasting the day looking at "Kristen" pictures, we here at the SDFLA blog have pictures from yesterday's federal bar luncheon. Judge Cooke gave a very entertaining speech and demonstrated why she is so well liked by just about everyone who appears before her.

Reminder -- Judge Marcia Cooke to speak tomorrow at lunch

At the Banker's Club at noon.

Cost is $35.

There are a few seats left. You can pay at the door if you RSVP to Lourdes at Lourdes_Fernandez@flsd.uscourts.gov

See you there!