Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

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From FindLaw "Top Legal Headlines"

And next they'll come for the trial lawyers. Hey, careful out there. Never trust a lame duck administration, especially if it walks like a goose.

11/08/08, 1:44 p.m. (Link here)

R.I.P. John Leonard.

My favorite reviewer. This is sad news.

10/26/08, 3:59 p.m. (Link here)

In the fancy condos across the way, a man is shouting rude words and football phrases at his television. This is a comparative relief, as for the moment he is not shouting abuse at his female companion.

Tell me again why they call it "gentrification"?

10/10/08, 10:12 p.m. (Link here)

On Wednesday [correction: oops, sorry, it was Thursday], with the Blue Angels overhead, I went shopping and took one of our neighbor's dogs to the vet.

- At the store, after a burst of plane noise, I saw a man wave his middle finger at the ceiling.

- At the neighbor's place, both her dogs were jumping up and yowling frantically.

- The vet's office was full of anxious dogs.

- The vet tech said she couldn't see spending money on a jet display with the economy tanking.

- A woman in the lobby not only disliked the noise, she said her husband, a pilot, found the shows too dangerous for populated areas.

- Later I met a woman with a cat who had just moved to town from New York City. She said the planes brought back anxieties for her from 9/11.

- Driving the dog home, I was at a light in the Tenderloin when the planes went low overhead. People on the corner stared up in panic. The dog, barking and whining, tried to climb over the back seat into my lap.

So, somebody please explain, why the hell?

9/5/08, 5:57 p.m. (Link here)

More journalists and orderly political marchers arrested in Minnesota. Even Amnesty International is concerned. A thought-provoking sidelight here about whether news reporters should have signed delayed-disclosure agreements to "embed" with the police.

9/4/08, 11:00 a.m. (Link here)

Been reading up on this Troopergate problem of Palin's.

"Palin's family had accused the trooper of shooting a cow moose without a permit, Tasering his stepson, and drinking while driving a trooper vehicle."

9/1/08, 7:37 p.m. (Link here)

More from the RNC: ride a bicycle, go to jail. Even if you work for the Convention itself.

9/1/08, 10:55 a.m. (Link here)

Preemptive raids and arrests at activist meetings in Minnesota. The whole M.O. sounds like the Palmer Raids.

Update: more detail via Froomkin.

Greenwald at Salon has more.

Greenwald reports it's been even worse today. Broadcaster Amy Goodman arrested for "conspiracy to riot."

Late 9/1: Another roundup from Froomkin. I'm so tired of seeing the Constitution violently defiled in the name of law and order. Yes, he notes some real reports of real crimes committed, but there is no reason why peaceful marchers, bystanders and journalists should suffer for crimes committed by others.

8/29/08, 11:48 p.m. (Link here)

Great acceptance speech by Sen. Obama last night, but how is it he only found space for one Amendment in the entire bleeding Bill of Rights and that was the Second? I can habeas corpus?

8/24/08, 11:40 p.m. (Link here)

Patricia Williams, sharp as usual, on how backhanded liberal racism leads to resentment of Sen. Obama as candidate:

Yet in a historical sense, the incoherent range of resentments directed against Obama mirrors so-called "white privilege": the refreshing self-assurance that comes from always having people of color to feel lucky beside--a not-entirely-conscious investment in feeling as though you're a good overseer, a kind benefactor, a source of uplift, a model to be emulated, a sharer, a provider, a dispenser of tough love. A feeling of impoverishment sets in when a member of that lower class you're supposed to be uplifting says, "I am one of you. I am your peer, and I'm equipped to represent you in taking the helm."

8/1/08, 10:06 a.m. (Link here)

Speaking of authoritarianism, Homeland Security has authorized itself to take your computer, for as long as it likes. And your diary. And your camera. And everything else you have with words or images down to the scraps of paper in your pockets, which it insultingly refers to as "pocket trash." This is the kind of "individual freedom" a Republican administration gets you.

8/1/08, 9:55 a.m. (Link here)

So the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, is again showing his deep authoritarian streak by proposing to fine people for incorrect garbage sorting.

Now, the next step in this little dance will be that some right-wing commentator accuses Newsom of belonging to "the left" and being somehow typical thereof. Speaking as an actual member of the San Francisco left, which has opposed Newsom and his big-business posse tooth and nail since he first ran for mayor, I would like to debunk this canard in advance.

F*scist an*l-retentive garbage policing is not a thing of the left. Trying to improve people with orders and punishment is not a thing of the left. Issuing blanket instructions that hurt poor people most is not a thing of the left. Forcing a population to make the trains run on time so the Leader will be viewed as a success is not a thing of the left.

Actual leftist tendencies are toward, well, democracy, for one thing. Also sharing of resources, skepticism toward central authority, and emphasis on improving real human well-being, not on looking slick for visiting potentates.

When people who call themselves members of "the left" diverge from these principles, they're slewing around to the right. For the deep-freeze Cold Warriors out there, yes, this includes Stalin. And, on a comparatively trivial scale, our authoritarian mayor.

7/30/08, 9:53 a.m. (Link here)

You would actually think terrorism charges, if brought at all, should be against the people trying to tear down New Orleans public housing, not the people trying to preserve it.

7/17/08, 8:18 p.m. (Link here)

I'm grateful to the UK Guardian for remembering the 2001 Genoa atrocities. Because I had recently been appalled by experiences as a legal observer in the U.S., I remember following the online news from Genoa in horror. At least now there are sentences (unlikely to be served, however) for some of the police who tortured journalists and demonstrators with impunity that week. As the Guardian says, "this is about fascism."

7/10/08, 5:35 p.m. (Link here)

Credit where due: C.W. Nevius, author of many anti-homeless columns in the SF Chronicle, actually recognizes that people can become homeless for reasons not their fault. Terribly sad, though, to see the comments his article received. The unfairly evicted man Nevius profiled happened to be a local North Beach character, one of the old Beat poets. Some of the commenters focused on this characteristic as a *negative*. They actually seem to hate poets. What kind of society raises people who aren't merely indifferent to poets but actively hate them?

J. had a better point this morning: how come it even matters that this guy was a local character, well known in his community? Isn't unfair eviction of a 70-year-old wrong no matter who knows him?

In the article, Kristie Fairchild of North Beach Citizens has the best point: there needs to be a special policy -- a "protocol," she calls it -- for reviewing evictions from supportive housing. These evictions are too easy, too fast, too common, and they wreck defenseless people's lives.

6/12/08, 10:17 p.m. (Link here)

At last, the Supreme Court reaffirms habeas corpus in Boumediene v. Bush.

Orwell to the contrary, able drafting doesn't always express honest thought, but this time the language tells us something. Here are Justices Kennedy and Souter invoking the known rules of ancient liberty for the majority. Here are Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia responding, in dissent, with peevish political tracts full of expedient arguments. Roberts (or his clerk) writes, "Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants," voicing the eternal scorned authoritarian's complaint of "After all we've done for you...". (Saints preserve us from such generosity.) Scalia shows more class, but his language (or his clerk's) is obscurantist as ever, and his diction (or his clerk's) still falls short of the occasion's dignity, e.g. "Those explanations are totally unpersuasive." (Like, totally, dude.)

At last, the turning of the tide, far too long in coming.

5/8/08, 11:16 p.m. (Link here)

Good grief: In the California appellate case of People v. Semien, a Christian pastor who works with the homeless is found to be correctly excluded from a jury because "The pastor is in the business of forgiveness, and the prosecutor was not required to accept the pastor's assurance that he could find someone guilty."

5/5/08, 9:10 p.m. (Link here)

R.I.P. Mildred Loving, as in Loving v. Virginia, the perfectly named U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the right to marry beyond racial classifications. There's a lovely phrase that I'm only seeing in the FindLaw version of the AP story:

In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history - she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.

"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."

4/17/08, 12:57 p.m. (Link here)

Is sludge good for poor black children? HUD decided to find out. Now some members of Congress want to know why.

Honestly, you almost couldn't make this up.

4/15/08, 9:08 p.m. (Link here)

Here we go: a Craigslist ad proposing shared space as a way to keep a home. This kind of thing is going to show up more often.

4/9/08, 4:40 p.m. (Link here)

San Francisco demonstrators can claim success in today's Olympic torch absurdity: the public acted straightforwardly, rationally, solemnly, seriously, responsibly... and it was the authorities who resorted to flash mob tactics.

So far, that is. I can hear a siren now...

4/9/08, 12:14 p.m. (Link here)

TOO MUCH: This ad for a "bank-owned" (foreclosed) house in the San Francisco Bay Area includes a photo of an empty bedroom with fairytale castle pictures on the wall -- pictures that clearly used to frame a little girl's bed.

4/6/08, 12:17 a.m. (Link here)

So, OK, someone tell me if I'm wrong and if so why:

Couldn't home mortgage borrowers who are threatened with foreclosure be helped by turning their extra space into shared quarters under Tenancy in Common contracts? I realize single-family zoning is a mainstay of suburban exclusivity, but shouldn't the zoning boards of hard-hit towns prefer TICs to foreclosure wastelands?

With so many households homeless, and so many other households rattling around in McMansions, and so many rich people squeezing out the poor from older city centers, it has been obvious for a while that the McMansions are going to be subdivided into cheaper, more reasonably sized living spaces. Why not just let it happen in an orderly fashion?

4/5/08, 11:23 p.m. (Link here)

San Francisco real estate finally goes off the deep end... or anyway the shallow end:

"Once in a lifetime opportunity to own a piece of the very desirable San Francisco Bay! *PLEASE BE ADVISED: this is an UNDERWATER LOT (Tidal Land), meaning it DOES NOT TOUCH THE SHORE. As a result, there is no sign on the property."

3/19/08, 12:06 a.m. (Link here)

Jesus, five years of this war. Make it stop.

3/17/08, 10:56 p.m. (Link here)

Sue Halpern in The New York Review of Books on the science of happiness:

"...what the happiness researchers now know -- that the people who say they are happy are those who are part of a community, have purpose-driven lives, and don't sweat the small stuff. (The researchers also know from their surveys that the happiest of happy Americans are Republicans, social butterflies, and bigots.)"

2/20/08, 8:25 p.m. (Link here)

Mouse eye view:

2/07/08, 12:25 a.m. (Link here)

At last, someone with an audience recalls Hillary Clinton's betrayal of everything her ex-friends at the Children's Defense Fund stood for. Laura Flanders tells it right in The Nation.

1/17/08, 9:29 p.m. (Link here)

Strange de Joel:

"Instead of 18-1/2 minutes of silence, now we have 473 days."

1/10/08, 10:22 p.m. (Link here)

"Those who go around publicizing the names of CIA people abroad are despicable."

That would be Bush Sr. speaking, in 1989, not Bush Jr. any time recently.

The current Google version of the AP story leaves out that bit.

1/04/08, 8:36 p.m. (Link here)

San Francisco had a heavy rainstorm today with high winds. Our doorbell shorted into blatting noise first thing in the morning -- a lovely wakeup. Later we lost power for a little over four hours. The eucalyptus tree that keeps threatening to come down didn't. I picked up a task I'd been avoiding, a dull hand tabulation of records, and lost no time from the outage. The power came back on while everything in the freezer was still frozen.

Very small deprivations, these, but they made me think of the Iraqi blogger Riverbend with her perpetual frets about power cuts and generator fuel and chances to get online. Hope she's all right, wherever she is.

1/02/08, 12:02 p.m. (Link here)

We rented The Birth of a Nation (yuk). Midway through, our cat had the good taste to walk out of the room. I'm sorry we stayed.

Strange to realize how much of the white supremacist crap in that film depends on male supremacist crap: Southern White Woman has to be helpless and in need of rescue to give white men a chivalrous-looking excuse for attacking black men. Men deny other men the right to vote, to serve on juries, etc., but women exist outside citizenship. One has fantasies of creating an escape route for the women in the film -- but where to? Ohio? Canada? C'mon, it's 1866, or at best 1915. Nowhere is safe yet...

[Morning thought: Griffith's propaganda has layers within layers. He might even have wished the viewer to reflect that women of all ancestries are oppressed in his world, to distract from the film's more basic falsehood -- the pretense that postwar events in the South were some kind of fair fight. The real story being brief hope and ensuing re-enslavement.]

[So, OK, someone has pointed out accurately that the claim isn't "fair fight," the claim is oppression of the poor beleaguered ex-slaveowners by their dreadful arrogant ex-slaves. Which may be the essence of fascism, come to think of it: stealing the moral authority of underdog status from the actual underdogs and using it to license unrestrained abuse by an already powerful majority. But this is probably obvious.]

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