Thursday, March 30, 2006

Where All Roads Lead

I didn't know until this day that is was Barzini all along.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Gee, Didn't See That Coming

Here is today's installment on why the Cubs will never, ever win. I'm old school. I prefer to build my team around pitchers who actually pitch.

Jerk

Sometimes, the best advice a lawyer can give a client is to say: "I understand why you are pissed off. But suing over this is a really bad idea. Turn around, walk out of my office, go do something fun and relaxing, and tomorrow or the next day you will be glad you didn't go through with this."

Clearly, Randy Johnson needed a lawyer to tell him that. Instead, he found one who let him do this. Here (scroll down two or three items), courtesy of Sports Law Blog, are some additional details, including a link to the court filing via The Smoking Gun.

Considering how much money Johnson has made in his career, the amount he has paid over the years is shockingly low, I'd say. To sue to get some of it back is as monumentally stupid as it is sleazy, especially considering his behavior toward this child. But no one ever said pitch velocity directly correlates to character.

Because I Say So

That's the title of this Dahlia Lithwick report on yesterday's Supreme Court argument in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. It also neatly summarizes the position of the Bush administration on every legal issue related to what it chooses to call the war on terrorism. You really don't need to read the article unless you care about freedom, the rule of law, the Constitution, and whether use of the writ of habeas corpus will be available when you need it.

Friday, March 24, 2006

This Time, It's Personal

Now, they have really gone too far.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Acts and Omissions

Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick is, for my money, the most consistently interesting and readable writer covering legal issues today. Here is her most recent take on the government's case against Zacarias Moussaoui.

Don't forget that the government is going through all of these legal gymnastics not to prove that a crime was committed. Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty and will spend the rest of his life doing the hardest time the feds have. This is all about whether the government can kill him. As I said in my post last night, enough already.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Enron

Although this is the eighth week of the Enron trial starring Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, and the prosecution is still about a week away from resting its case, tomorrow and the first couple of days of next week could be the most important days of the entire trial.

For the past two days, former Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan has been testifying for the government. And, as the Houston Chronicle's trial blog summary of his testimony makes clear, Glisan seems to be sticking it to the defendants, especially Lay.

Although chief crook Andrew Fastow has already testified, and both Skilling and Lay have made clear that they will testify in their own defenses, the cross-examination of Glisan that begins tomorrow is likely to be crucial for the jurors. Of all the major Enron players who have testified, it is Glisan alone who does not have a plea deal allowing him to be sentenced after his testimony or who, like Fastow, got a better deal in exchange for the promise of testimony helpful to the prosecution. Instead, Glisan pleaded guilty in 2003 to a conspiracy charge, was sentenced to five years, and went straight to prison.

The defense -- especially Lay lawyer Michael Ramsey -- has been hammering witnesses who took plea deals and making the obvious and plausible point to the jurors that people who have something to gain from their testimony ought not to be believed. In addition, Fastow's history of deceit makes it easy to argue to the jurors that they should not believe Fastow if he testified that the Sun rises in the East. Then, of course, still to come are the defendants themselves. While their credibility and ability to persuade the jurors that their story is the truthful one will obviously be important, sometimes jurors treat the star witnesses (Skilling, Law, Fastow) as canceling each other out and instead look for the corroborating testimony and evidence.

Which is what makes Glisan so important. He was a senior Enron official, he worked directly with or had very frequent contacts with Fastow, Lay, and Skilling, as Treasurer he knew about all the deals and the numbers -- in short, he was there. And he didn't take a deal, which could give his credibility a real boost in the eyes of the jurors.

All of which means that the defense has to come at him hard when the cross-examination starts tomorrow morning. Because if the jurors believe Ben Glisan, Skilling and Lay are in serious trouble.

Enough Already

What an embarrassment the Zacarias Moussaoui trial has become. Maybe the government should not have tried so hard last week to prevent the case from being dismissed after Carla Martin, a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration assisting the prosecutors, was found to have coached witnesses improperly and otherwise violated basic trial rules.

This week does not seem to have gone much better. On Monday, an FBI agent testified that he submitted a memo on August 18, 2001, saying that Moussaoui should be investigated as a potential terrorist hijacker. Yesterday, another FBI agent -- the first agent's boss -- testified that he never read the memo. Today, the prosecution trotted out Robert Cammaroto, a TSA staffer apparently untainted by Ms. Martin, to say that if Moussaoui had talked after being arrested in August 2001, the FAA could have taken steps to thwart the hijackers.

Of course, that testimony might have been more persuasive if Cammaroto also did not have to admit on cross-examination that the FAA knew before September 11 of a plan to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower and of al-Qaida plans for suicide missions generally. What Cammaroto said the FAA did not know, however, was whether al-Qaida's suicide attacks would include suicide airplane attacks in the U.S. Oh, okay, that makes sense.

And did I mention the unread freakin' memo? Gee, if only the government had known something bad was going to happen!!!!

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Can't Hardly Wait

Harrison Ford announced this week that he and Steven Spielberg are ready to begin shooting the fourth Indiana Jones movie, with a release date in about two years. Now 63 years old, Ford hopes to make Hollywood history -- and tap into the ever-increasing economic clout of older Americans -- with the first blockbuster featuring a geriatic action hero.

Tentatively titled "Indiana Jones and the High PSA Score," the story once again finds Indiana fighting Germans seeking world domination. This time around, Indiana, awake one night at 3 a.m. after peeing for the second time, discovers that his Medicare Part D provider is a front for a Berlin-based pharmaceutical company trying to corner the market on high cholesterol medication. Indiana infiltrates the ring of bad guys and, after a quick nap and an early dinner, foils the plot.

Walk, don't run, to this one.

Erin Go Blah

Green shirts, green ties, green pants, green socks, green hats, green buttons, green antennae things on the head, green socks, green beer. Yelling for no apparent reason.

God, how I hate St. Patrick's Day.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

You're Number One!

Everyone involved in this case has way too much free time. Construction workers, police, a local magistrate, a constable, a lawyer, and now the courts -- all but the lawyer paid for with public money -- have to be involved in something like this? Just return the flip off and be done with it.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Let's All Go for Ice Cream!

As if one needs more evidence that the World Baseball Classic is a complete joke, the United States' 17-0 victory over South Africa yesterday ended after five innings due to the tournament's mercy rule. Mercy rule? What is this, Little League? Will all the players get a trophy at the end of the tournament?

Going South

Here's a story that is not getting near the attention it deserves. At the trial here in Philadelphia of two men charged with first-degree murder in the killing of a 10-year-old boy, five witnesses have changed their stories or denied making statements to the police implicating the defendants. One witness denied statements contained in a five-page document bearing her signature on every page and, even more amazingly, disavowed her prior sworn testimony given at the preliminary hearing in the case. "I never said that," she now says.

I don't envy the jurors in this case. But once they make their decision, let's see how all involved -- the community, police, District Attorney, and the courts -- respond to this corruption of the justice system.

See for Yourself

If you haven't seen the cartoon drawings of Mohammed that recently led to violent protests in many countries (as well as some non-violent protests, including here in Philadelphia), you can view them here on The Volokh Conspiracy blog. As Eugene Volokh correctly notes, what is so surprising is how seemingly tame the pictures are.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Enron Trial

If you are not following the trial of former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, 1) you are missing out on some good stuff; and 2) this would be a good week to start. Five weeks into the case, the government has finally called former CFO Andrew Fastow to testify.

Fastow already has pleaded guilty to a variety of charges and soon will begin serving a 10-year prison term. As a going-away present to himself, and to fulfill the terms of his deal with prosecutors, Fastow will try to convince the jury that Lay and Skilling (especially Skilling) knew of, tolerated, at least tacitly encouraged, and certainly benefited from his crimes. Here's a running account of Fastow's first day, courtesy of the Houston Chronicle's trial blog. Note how little Lay was apparently mentioned, something that has occurred on many other days during the trial so far. It will be interesting to see whether and how that changes as the case moves along.

Oh, that sound you hear is Skilling attorney Daniel Petrocelli drooling at the thought of cross-examining Fastow. Stay tuned.

Proving An Efficiency Not Previously Displayed

After several years of delay amid legal wrangling over numerous issues, most prominently the intersection of national security concerns and the right to a fair trial as well as the antics of a questionably sane defendant, the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui has begun. Since Moussaouri already has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hijack planes and commit other crimes in furtherance of al-Qaeda activities, the jury sitting in Alexandria, Virginia need only decide whether Moussaouri should be executed. If the jurors cannot agree that he should be killed, then he will receive a sentence of life in prison without parole.

As this article explains, in order to obtain the death penalty, federal prosecutors must convince the jury that a direct link exists between Moussaouri and September 11, 2001, attacks. But since Moussaouri had been arrested weeks before the attacks, the government is left to argue that had he not lied to the authorities, the attacks would have been prevented. As prosecutor Rob Spencer put it, "[h]ad Mr. Moussaoui just told the truth, it would all have been different."

Maybe. But that argument seems to assume quite a lot, not least being that Moussaouri knew meaningful details regarding what the other September 11 plotters were going to do. I have no idea how terrorist conspirators work, but that notion strikes me as unlikely. Prosecutors might have an easier time if everyone did not already know how the government used -- or didn't use -- the information that it actually did have. And prosecutors should hope that none of the jurors saw the FEMA videos last week showing the President and other senior administration officials being told in advance about breached levees, serious problems at the Superdome, and other predictable consequences of Hurricane Katrina.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

How to Forget Your Own Troubles

Is there anything more fun in the sports pages these days than reading about that train wreck of a franchise called the New York Knicks? It's just all so good.

The owner, James Dolan, makes such consistently bad decisions that he proves every day that he must have inherited his money. Of course, his dumbest decision was hiring Isiah Thomas, the most incompetent person in America not working in a senior position in the Bush administration.

Dolan's second dumbest decision was giving Thomas the highest payroll in the league to spend, which Thomas has done on such gems as Jalen Rose ($15.6 million and 12.6 points per game); Maurice Taylor ($9.1 million and 6.3 points per game); Quentin Richardson ($6.8 million and 8.1 points per game); and Jerome James (5.0 million and 2.8 points per game). But the best part is that all four of these players are under contract next year at even higher salaries, including James, to whom Thomas last summer gave a five-year $30 million free agent contract. Well, he did average nearly five points and three rebounds a game playing for Seattle last year.

And let's not forget Larry Brown, whose legendary coaching skills will soon help the Knicks shatter the 15-win barrier. He's getting $10 million a year. Which, hard as it might be to believe, is probably not enough to have to work with this outfit.

Oh, No. Not Again

Last week it was President Bush (see post of February 22). Today I'm agreeing with George Steinbrenner. May God help us all.

But His Yankeeness is right about the World Baseball Classic: It is, as he so pithily put it in USA Today this week, "bull----."

I have never understood why owners of pro sports teams -- especially basketball and now baseball -- meekly allow their most valuable assets to play for national teams in events like the Olympics and the new World Baseball Classic. So let's see if I have this right: Steinbrenner pays Derek Jeter about $19 million per year. Jeter decides to play baseball not for the Yankees, but for "his country" in a pretend tournament made up of pretend teams (as noted a few days ago, dozens of American players are playing for the national teams of foreign countries) to prove absolutely nothing. But then Jeter gets hurt playing for the Red, White, and Blue, and guess what -- Steinbrenner is signing very real checks paying Jeter not to play for the Yankees.

It could happen, if not to Jeter then to another player. It is particularly nuts for Major League teams to let their pitchers play in the WBC. Usually in the first week in March pitchers are throwing barely an inning in Grapefruit League split-squad games. Next week, they will be "playing for their country," which cannot be good news for their very isolationist rotator cuffs (although there will be pitch counts -- I told you it was a pretend tournament).

The same thing happens with NBA players in the Olympics. Normally tough and smart business people give away their most valuable assets while maintaining 100 percent of the risk of loss of or injury to that asset. It simply makes no sense, which is why the reason it happens must have something to do with patriotism, or at least the economics-driven peer pressure that passes for patriotism in baseball and basketball circles these days. And don't forget, kids, your officially licensed Italy Authentic Customized 2006 World Baseball Classic Home Jersey is available here.

It's the Incompetence, Stupid

This is am amazing story from the Associated Press on the briefings President Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and their staffs received before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

What did the President know? As the article states, that Katrina "could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers," i.e., essentially everything that happened. When did the President know it? August 28, the day before the storm arrived.

What did the President say? "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Except lots of people did, and now it is clear that they told him and Chertoff directly.

Heck of a job, Bushie.