Daily Archives: August 24, 2006

Hoop Nazis

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Basketball Hoop of the Rich and Lazy.jpgI recognize that the University Park area of Dallas is a nice place to live and all, and I also concede that the residents there are rightly attentive to maintaining property values and the decorum of the area. But this recent Dallas Morning News article reports on an initiative that establishes fairly convincingly that a number of the UP residents simply do not have enough to do:

Hoops could be shot down in this wealthy community thanks to a proposed ordinance banning basketball goals in front yards. The reason? To some city officials, they don’t look too good.
That’s the basis of a proposed University Park ordinance prohibiting portable and permanent basketball hoops. On Tuesday, council members postponed a decision on the ordinance until their Aug. 22 meeting so revisions could be made, . . .
Under the proposal, violators could be fined up to $2,000 a day. [. . .]
The ordinance the Planning and Zoning Commission and city staff originally recommended would have allowed residents to keep portable basketball goals in their front yards for up to 30 days a year. Council members wanted none of that, though.
They went back and forth for about 15 minutes at their Tuesday meeting on whether to allow swings, soccer goals and basketball goals in front yards at all. Some wanted to allow them certain months of the year, others only during daylight hours.
Portable soccer goals and badminton nets were deemed allowable because they could be moved inside every night. So were one-seat swings, provided they don’t swing into the street.
Trampolines and basketball goals weren’t as lucky.
“It’s just not as pleasing to the eye,” [the] Mayor . . . said about the goals.

The sinking Milberg Weiss ship

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Milberg Weiss new11.gifClass action securities powerhouse Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman has been attempting to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of the Justice Department’s decision to go Arthur Andersen on the firm earlier this year (previous posts here), but this New York Observer article (related NY Times article here) reports that the firm’s demise is imminent, well before the criminal trial of the firm:

A lawyer for a competing firm, who asked to remain anonymous, said that he had interviewed several Milberg Weiss employees seeking a position with his firm.
He said they have the same sense of the mood at the firm.
ìThat itís sad, itís a sinking ship, itís like a funeral home. Itís extremely upsetting,î he said. ìItís like waiting for them to turn out the lights and close the door; theyíre running for the exits.î
Published reports have documented the departure of about two dozen attorneys since the indictments were handed down. Thatís a lot in a firm of 125 lawyers.
And of the offices once listed on the companyís Web siteóLos Angeles; Boca Raton, Fla.; and Manhattanóonly the New York and California branches remain.
The firm once employed close to 500 people, including paralegals, investigators, messengers, secretaries, forensic experts and lawyers. [ . . .]
The ìexperience with Arthur Andersen indicated that partnerships are fragile entities,î said [New York University law professor and Milberg Weiss advisor Samuel] Issacharoff. ìThatís the reality.î

The government’s prosecution of Milberg Weiss out of business will have nowhere near the economic impact that the government’s effective shuttering of Arthur Andersen had. And certainly a plaintiff’s firm is not the type of victim that elicits much sympathy. However, that does not make any less outrageous what the government is doing here — effectively killing the accused after investigating it for over five years and before it is determined whether it has committed a crime. That there is not more of an outcry over this injustice reflects a troubling deference that even the legal community is now giving to the abuse of the criminal justice system by federal prosecutors. As Sir Thomas More reminds us “do you really think you could stand upright in the winds [of abusive prosecutorial power] that would blow” if that power were applied to you?

The risk of supporting a former girlfriend

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Hecht and Miers.jpgIt’s reasonably clear that Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht didn’t think anything of it when he gave dozens of media interviews last year supporting President Bush’s nomination to the US Supreme Court of his former girlfriend and fellow parishoner, trusted Bush White House advisor Harriet Miers.
But the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct didn’t view Justice Hecht’s politicking on behalf of Miers in the same way. In May, the Commission issued an ethics rebuke to Justice Hecht, determining that he had improperly used the prestige of his office to support the nomination of Miers. Earlier this week, Justice Hecht appealed that decision to a three-judge panel during a hearing in Ft. Worth (hat tip to Peter Lattman for the link).
The Commission accused Justice Hecht of going ìon a specific mission, a campaign, in connection with certain parties in the White House and their operativesî and, in so doing, violated two canons of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct:

ìA judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others;î and
ìA judge . . . shall not authorize the public use of his or her name endorsing another candidate for any public office.î

In response, Justice Hecht contends that the Commission misapplied the canons because Miers was not a political candidate, was not involved in a political election race and had no election opponent. Moreover, Justice Hecht observed that reporters were interested in his views about Miers because of his three-decade friendship with her, not because of his status as a Texas Supreme Court Justice.
The three-judge panel has 60 days in which to issue a ruling. The panel’s decision may be appealed directly to the US Supreme Court, which Hecht lawyer Chip Babcock contends that he will if the Commission’s rebuke of Justice Hecht is upheld.