I suppose this will be the first personal rant for this blog.  Wow!  Long, long thirty-six hours … going off ninety minutes of sleep. However, a nice looking Opposition to Motion to Dismiss in a federal civil rights matter is done, and ready for filing. Being a attorney doing civil rights/constitutional cases is not easy.  Oftentimes, as i

I started off a long way back — during law school — as a clerk at a capital post-conviction organization (Volunteer Lawyers’ Resource Center, aka, “VLRC”).  It was a fulfilling experience and certainly opened my eyes to the reality of capital (death penalty) cases — both in trial and on post-conviction.  In par

Over the past several years, I have repeatedly confronted these issues involving the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Does this law still have ‘teeth?’  Arguably, “yes.”  However, the commentator, below, is correct in second-guess its effectiveness against new waves of technology, especially when wielded by la

Well, this would certainly be a welcome turnabout.  For many federal white collar defense practitioners, the Almendarez-Torres decision constituted an aberration from the wonders of Apprendi in the area of determinations of sentencing.  Apprendi properly placed the burden for any sentencing enhancements onto the shoulders of a jury.  It removed

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/449638/alito,_thomas_ This time, atop Justices Thomas and Scalia, you can add Samuel Alito to the roster of Supreme Court Justices engaged in rabidly partisan politics.  Members of the judiciary are, traditionally, to keep at arm’s length of political entanglements.  Yet, these three apparently g

I know … I know ….  In the midst of this blog, I post something intended to lecture attorneys on the dangers of social media. Nonetheless, despite the irony …. The attorney initially referenced, Sean Conway, was a classmate of mine at FSU Law back in the early 1990s.  His sanctioning was tragic (and, in my professional opinion,

We will need to face the likely reality that a constitutional amendment — the surest method for reversing the harm to our democracy wreaked by the Citizens United decision (one year old this week) — will not pass due to obstruction from the political party benefiting from unlimited corporate contributions.  So, how do we go about enfor

Special thanks to the wonderful legal blog, “Concurring Opinions.”  As promised in my initial blog postings, I will occasionally post an article that discusses political economics, a passion of mine since my college days.  The article, below, discusses the trend of our Government to favoring the further consolidation of wealth within