GREEN EGGS AND IRAN

An inmate protesting the food at the New Hampshire Department of Corrections attached a boiled egg to the pleadings he filed. United States Magistrate Judge James Muirhead had a little fun with the order, which is HERE

in which he wrote in part:

I do not like eggs in the file.
I do not like them in any style.
I will not take them fried or boiled.
I will not take them poached or broiled.
I will not take them soft or scrambled
Despite an argument well rambled.

We first spied the order on our favourite federal blog.
We think it’s important for everyone but especially Judges to have a sense of humor.


The President of Iran, in the Big Apple this week for a UN Meeting on Global warning that President Bush decided not to attend, spoke yesterday at Colombia University.

Memo to the President: The ice cap is melting faster than expected. Go HERE to read the article.

We support Colombia University, not for giving a platform to a “petty dictator” who has denied the Holocaust and called for the destruction of Israel. We support Colombia University because in the market place of ideas, the only way we can win is to subject the ideas and positions of people like Ahmadinejad to the scrutiny of the public. Better to have the world hear Ahmadinejad in his own words deny the holocaust and deny the existence of any homosexuals in Iran, than to give him support by muzzling him and turning him into a martyr. Was anyone really worried that he would convince any rational individual that the holocaust didn’t happen? Either we meet and defeat this extremist in the market place of ideas, or we fight him on the battlefield. While the latter may indeed happen, we should not forget that we brought down the entire repressive Soviet Regime without one solider losing his life in direct combat with the Russians. Extremism can fail under its own oppressive weight.

Give peace a chance. Or as President Reagan said "Trust. But verify."

Isn't it ironic that people from the greatest generation, like the President's father, risked their lives in WWII to save the world from tyranny, only to see their children slowly destroy the world with pollution and carbon emissions?

Michael Vick was indicted in Virginia State court on dog fighting charges. While we have no sympathy for Vick, isn’t it about time congress did something to stop these oppressive two front prosecutions that state court and federal prosecutors engage in to put extreme pressure on defendants? Here in South Florida we see that every day when the Feds decide to shoot some fish in the barrel by indicting defendants in Federal Court for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon after the defednant has pled to a CCF in State court. The Federal charge can carry a 15 year minimum mandatory and with a state court plea already in the books, what defense can be mounted? Congress needs to put some teeth back into the double jeopardy clause.


And finally, the NY Times carried this OP ED PIECE
piece by Adam Cohen about Senator Craig’s attempt to set aside his plea for disorderly conduct in a Mens room in the Minnesota Airport.

Craig, a right wing Christian Conservative Republican has been a big backer of President Bush’s federal judicial nominees. You know who they are- the conservative judicial candidates who are believers in limiting a defendants access to courts, and who have eviscerated most of the case law on post conviction relief. Now comes Senator Craig, who suddenly finds himself with the strange bedfellow of – no, not an undercover officer- but the ACLU who is supporting his attempt to withdraw his plea of guilty.

From Mr. Cohen’s Op Ed Piece:

Mr. Craig is hardly alone in deciding that he likes defendants’ rights after he became a defendant. Among law-and-order conservatives, it’s the norm. Oliver North got his Iran-contra convictions thrown out, with the A.C.L.U.’s help, on a relative technicality. This year, an official of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, James Tobin, got his conviction for jamming Democratic Party lines in New Hampshire on Election Day reversed on a fine point about what his “purpose” was.
It would be gratifying if conservatives who saw the legal system’s flaws up close were changed by the experience. After all, as the joke goes, a liberal is just a conservative who has been arrested. But more often, they carve out an exception to their tough-on-crime philosophy, just for themselves.

As we have said time and time again, Karma Kramer.
Nothing is so satisfying as to see some law and order right wing conservative suddenly in desperate need of the services we struggle to provide clients on a daily basis.

See You In Court, where there are some judges we'd love to give an egg with our pleadings, but we probably won't.