Judge Larry Seidlin, the Florida judge handling part of the Anna Nicole Smith case, has been all over the news the last few days.  If you've even looked at a TV or a tabloid newspaper, you know why. I rise to speak in his defense.  (I don't know whether there's any "Crime" issues involved here, but there are a lot of "justice" issues, and an opportunity to show how some of the "inside baseball" of lawyering and litigation works.)

In handling the case before him, Judge Larry was not nuts, stupid, or incompetent.  His handling of that case was the work of genius.

Yes.  The work of genius.

There was once a case, a long time ago, in the Chancery courts of the State of New Jersey.  It involved two rival furriers, and a dishonest accountant.  They litigated up, down and around the courts for years, yielding some of the leading cases on dirty business practices and abundant lawyers' fees.  

At one point in this series of lawsuits, the accountant, Robert Caruba, was "...charged with  having testified `falsely, deceptively and perjuriously'  while under oath as a witness", having been subpoenaed to appear before a special master and explain his bookkeeping.  His contempt and perjury charges were, as was the way things were done then, brought before the Court in the reported decision of In re Caruba, 139 N.J. Eq. 404 (Ch.), aff'd 140 N.J. Eq. 563 (E. &A. 1947), which happens to be one of my favorite opinions to read.  Given today are the closings in US v. Libby, a perjury case, I think you'll see from the excerpts I'll present that, the more things change, the more they remain the same.  (Or some other similarly trite saying....)

Are you sitting down?  Stupid question.  Of course, you're sitting down.  Who stands up in front of the computer?  Well, maybe people who do not own chairs or have injured their buttocks.  Oops, I used the word buttocks.  Second time in two days.  Normally, I try to avoid using such raw language in my writing.  I hope that I did not offend you.  Although I cannot really imagine how I could have caused offense.  I merely used a word that describes an essential part of the human anatomy.  I even resisted the temptation to employ coarse slang--such as can, keister, heinie, tush, wazoo, fanny, or my current favorite, ba-donka-donk.

In any regard, is there anyone among us who is not equipped with buttocks?  Granted, there are some who have difficulty distinguishing this part of their anatomy from their elbow or a hole in the ground.  A few members of Congress and loutish pundits come to mind.  Nonetheless, they still possess a rump.  And a chest (for thumping).  And a stomach (for gorging).  And a mouth (for sneering).  And a head and shoulders (for shampooing).  And too many other body parts to mention.  By the way, do any of these anatomical terms cause you offense or unease?  Are you shocked to see them in print?  No?  Then sit your buttocks down and prepare yourself...

[Insert ominous music.]

How about scrotum?  Granted, some of you lack this physical accoutrement and perhaps find it as bewildering and foreign as Yemen.  But roughly half of the world's population is in possession of the family jewels--myself included (although once, as a teen walking away from a fight, I was accused of not having any).  It is part of my physiology.  This is no big secret.  This is not a matter of national security to be withheld from the public.  This is nothing to be ashamed about.  So why does the word scrotum elicit disapprobation or discomfort?  Why do some frown at the use of the term and seek to protect their children from exposure to such language?  It all seems rather arbitrary and silly.  Not to mention repressed.  Case in point, the following news article in the New York Times:

These are the stories that haunt me.  This one is from the Boston Globe:

Hull parents arrested in girl's poisoning death

The parents of a 4-year-old girl from Hull were arrested yesterday on murder charges after investigators concluded they poisoned their daughter, prosecutors said.

Michael Riley , 34, and his wife, Carolyn, 32, were taken into custody at his mother's house in Weymouth in the death of their daughter Rebecca in December, said officials in the Plymouth district attorney's office.

Just after 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 13, Hull police responded to a call for an unresponsive girl at the family's home on Lynn Avenue, prosecutors said. They found Rebecca dead on her parents' bedroom floor.

An investigation by State Police and Hull police found the girl had been prescribed the drugs clonidine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and valproic acid and Seroquel for bipolar disorder. A psychiatrist had diagnosed her with both disorders at age 2 1/2, prosecutors said.

The medical examiner's office determined the girl died from "intoxication due to the combined effects" of the drugs clonidine, valproic acid (Depakote), dextromethorphan, and chlorpheniramine, the district attorney's office said in a statement.

"This occurred as a result of the intentional overdose of Rebecca with clonidine," the statement said. "The manner of death was determined to be homicide...."

Denise Monteiro , a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services, said the department "found evidence for neglect" of Rebecca.

On Dec. 13, the agency removed the couple's other children, a 6-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy, from the home, Monteiro said. They remain in foster homes.

In 2005, DSS began investigating allegations that Michael Riley sexually abused a 13-year-old girl,...identified...as Carolyn Riley's daughter from another relationship. The girl had been adopted to another home in 2002.

Also in 2005, DSS launched an investigation into whether Carolyn Riley had neglected her children, Monteiro said.

"We supported the allegations of abuse, and we forwarded that report to the Norfolk district attorney's office," she said. "We also supported the allegations of neglect against the mother."  [full text]

This is an open letter to those of you who support our continued occupation of Iraq and to those of you who support Bush's war escalation.  I have a simple question - what did Cpl Langarica die for?

UPDATED: October 14, 2007

Since the story of a cheap safe cancer cure first broke on Jan 23 in NewScientistdotCom, virtually NO US mainstream media has picked up on and reported the story.

Google news searchs on "dichloroacetate" now produce only 9 hits this morning (compared to 59 hits in February). Contrast that to 15,433 news search hits this morning on "al-qaeda", for a bit of perspective. Cancer is a killer disease affecting millions of people every year, so the ignoring of this story cannot be due to any "lack of interest".

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells.

Well, it's about f'g time.

Today, a prosecutor in Munich disclosed the existence of arrest warrants for 13 members of Ghost Air crews, relative to the kidnapping of Khaled al Masri from Macedonia to a US prison in Afghanistan.  He was left to molder there for months while Condi and others debated exactly what to do with him, seeing as he really was the wrong guy.  Ultimately, they had him flown back to and dumped off pretty close to the same spot he'd been kidnapped from.  The US District Court has dismissed his tort suit, on the "state secrets" doctrine;  he's appealing to the Fourth Circuit.

It all started with a family feud over something approximating a house, which didn't even have running water.

It ended with the two twenty-somethings getting life without parole in federal prison, thanks to "hardball charging" by the Havre, Montana area US Attorney.


For the next fifty or sixty years from now, these two will molder in federal prison, their lives wasted on the altar of some Congresscritter who wanted to be seen as tough-on-crime, and the ambition of a local Assistant US Attorney.  Oh, yeah.  We taxpayers get to foot the bill for it, too.  Fifty or sixty years' worth of Harvard tuition, room, board and books, each.

According to NPR, 30 years ago this week, ABC's mini-series Roots was first broadcast.  This series was one of the most watched in television history.  

I have a question for President Bush.  If he truly embraces the concept of No Child Left Behind, why does he limit such to educational performance?  Why is it seemingly okay for children to be left behind in myriad ways outside the schoolhouse doors but, once they cross the threshold, it is suddenly unacceptable?  If the federal government truly values this nation's most precious resource (hint: it's not petroleum but children), then ought there not be a commitment to the whole child, inside and outside of school?  After all, doesn't it stand to reason that a child who lags behind at home--e.g., due to poverty and its attendant ills--may as a result lag behind at school?  Is the school somehow expected to compensate for such?

Okay, so I had a handful of questions for the Big Kahuna.  But consider the following data, as reported by the National Center for Children in Poverty:

Nearly 13 million American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is $20,000 a year for a family of four. The number of children living in poverty increased by more than 11 percent between 2000 and 2005. There are 1.3 million more children living in poverty today than in 2000, despite indications of economic recovery and growth.

Not only are these numbers dispiriting, the official poverty measure tells only part of the story--it is increasingly viewed as a flawed metric of economic hardship....Research consistently shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty level to make ends meet. Children living in families with incomes below this level--for 2006, $40,000 for a family of four--are referred to as low income. Thirty-nine percent of the nation's children--more than 28 million in 2005--live in low-income families.  [full text]

In his appearance on 60 Minutes, George Bush was asked about the mulitple deployments for our servicemen in Iraq.  Here is the exchange:

German radio reported today on two of the on-going political/legal problems they have to deal with:  the treatment of terror suspects, and the resurgent neo-Nazi movement.