News & Politics

Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have moved to quash subpoenas seeking the names of students suspected of Internet music piracy, saying they’re illegal because they weren’t properly filed.

The schools said the subpoenas, issued by the Recording Industry Association of America, didn’t allow for adequate time to notify the students, as mandated by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

Read it here via Boston.com via the AP online.

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 11, 2007; Page A12

BAGHDAD, May 10 — A majority of members of Iraq’s parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq’s legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament’s approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

The neocons who put us in Iraq in the first place have been disgraced. Our own congress wants us out. Our own people want us out. And now the Iraqi “government” wants us out, too. What is it going to take to get George Bush to admit that the main thrust of his presidency has completely failed and that we need to get the hell out of Iraq, now? Will it take another Kent State?

The text in the box above is quoted from Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post.

Congressional leaders of both parties called for hearings and issued condemnations yesterday in the wake of reports that President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to spy on hundreds of U.S. citizens and other residents without court-approved warrants.

Bush declined to discuss the domestic eavesdropping program in a television interview, but he joined his aides in saying that the government acted lawfully and did not intrude on citizens’ rights.

Right. And Dick Chaney is a benevolent, huggable nun. Details here from the Washington Post.

Eureka! Extraordinary discovery unlocks secrets of the ancients

Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time using technology which experts believe will unlock the secrets of the ancient world.

Among treasures already discovered by a team from Oxford University are previously unseen writings by classical giants including Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod. Invisible under ordinary light, the faded ink comes clearly into view when placed under infra-red light, using techniques developed from satellite imaging.

The Oxford documents form part of the great papyrus hoard salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus more than a century ago. The thousands of remaining documents, which will be analysed over the next decade, are expected to include works by Ovid and Aeschylus, plus a series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years.

That’s pretty cool. Details here from The Indepenent.

Shortly after arriving at the Justice Department nearly four years ago, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was faced with a new internal study that raised serious questions about the application of the federal death penalty.

A small number of federal districts, including pockets of Texas and Virginia, were accounting for the bulk of death cases. Experts decried the geographical disparities.

For Ashcroft, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, the solution was to seek the death penalty more often and more widely.

Attorney General Asshat is an evangelical Christian and is vehemently “pro-life.” So when he sees that too many people are being killed by the federal government in Texas and Virginia, what’s his solution? Kill more people everywhere else, so it won’t look so bad. Fortunately, his plan hasn’t worked very well.

Details are here in an excellent (and timely) piece from Richard B. Schmitt of the Los Angeles Times.

Grokster president Wayne Rosso.

I stole this awesome quotation from Donna Wentworth of COPYfight.org, a great blog straight outta Harvard Law School. Donna has done us a great service by blogging from (something called) ILAW. Thanks, Donna!

Remember a few days ago that I said climate change would be the Achilles heel for the Chamber of Commerce and the anti-consumer, anti-lawsuit hacks who run it?

The White House and environmental groups are turning up the heat on the Chamber of Commerce, and some of its member companies are feeling the burn.

At a National Press Club event last week, seven different reporters tried to ask the chairwoman of Royal Dutch Shell how her oil company could push for climate legislation while maintaining its membership in the Chamber.

Toyota has been inundated with calls and e-mails from Prius owners, pushed by MoveOn.org to demand an explanation of how the automaker’s membership in the Chamber squares with the green vibe it wraps around its hybrid cars.

And New York-based Mohawk Fine Papers — “the largest premium paper manufacturer in North America” — pulled out of the Chamber this week. It was the seventh company to resign over the business lobby’s opposition to climate change legislation.

Source: Firms take fire in war on Chamber – Lisa Lerer – POLITICO.com

I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly stupid it would be of trial lawyers not to take advantage of this situation to drive members and membership dollars away from the Chamber.  Look, the Chamber is already blaming defections of companies like Apple on trial lawyers anyway.  So instead of standing on the sidelines and playing the scapegoat, why not go on the offensive and hit them where it hurts?

Put the pressure on.  Make them spend their dollars defending their (outlandish) position instead of advocating for the dismantlement of the civil justice system.

Get to it!

Sara Caplan, a former lawyer for Phil Spector, will be held in contempt of court if she refuses to testify about whether she saw a defense expert mishandle material that could be evidence in the music producer’s murder trial, the judge ruled this morning. The decision carries criminal penalties, but the contempt ruling was immediately stayed until June 22 to allow Caplan time to appeal to a higher court. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler also gave the parties until Monday at 9 a.m. to work out a compromise.

Fidler said it was the first time in his 25 years on the bench that he has had to punish an attorney with contempt. The jurist was clearly sorrowful that the dispute over Caplan’s testimony led to his decision.

“It goes without saying that nobody wants to be here today,” Fidler said as he recited his ruling from the bench. “Nobody has any personal animus against Miss Caplan. “I admire her for taking the stance she is taking; I don’t agree with it,” Fidler said, adding later that as a judge he had no choice. “You often have to do things you don’t like.” “I see no reason why Miss Caplan should not testify,” said Fidler, who was a defense attorney for 10 years. “There is no other person who can testify to what she saw.”

Details here from the Los Angeles Times.

This is the week that the Supreme Court, done with its regular argument sessions, enters the stretch run.

While it is too soon for substantive appraisals of the first year of the Roberts court, it is not too soon for stylistic observations about what is clearly, in the view of lawyers who have appeared there this term, a different court.

“The tone has changed,” Prof. Richard J. Lazarus of the Georgetown University Law Center, where he runs the Supreme Court Institute and teaches a course on Supreme Court advocacy, said on Tuesday.

In common with every other Supreme Court specialist contacted for this article, Professor Lazarus listed several obvious changes. “They’re not stepping on each other,” he said of the justices. “They take longer before someone asks the first question. They give the lawyers more time to answer.”

Beth S. Brinkmann, like Professor Lazarus a veteran of the solicitor general’s office, who now represents private clients before the court, said of the new courtroom experience: “You sit there and think, ‘Whoa, isn’t anyone going to ask a question?'”

Details here from the New York Times.