Talk About a Bad Day in Court

Man, I know lawyers sometimes take shit from clients, but this is just way beyond the call of duty. (No, um, homonymic pun intended.)

And the hapless public defender at the receiving end of the aforesaid shit–well, he’s handling it with a surplus of dignity and a whole lot more equanimity than I could muster up in that situation.

What I don’t understand is–what about fricking security? I suppose it never occurred to them that this nutcase could be carrying a sack of shit around in his pocket. But don’t they check these people for other things they could be carrying? Wouldn’t a routine search of this guy’s person have avoided the whole problem?

And this isn’t some podunk jail in the middle of East Nowheresville with threadbare security protocols and no crime to speak of. This took place in a California state court in San Diego–an actual city that probably attracts its share of lunatics and then some.

They may be able to keep guns and knives out of the courtroom, but when it comes to caca–look out, folks, and get ready to duck.

Lawyers Discover the Web!

“Holy crap, Batman!” (As Robin might have put it, if he’d been allowed to say the word “crap” on a 1960s TV show.) Lawyers (those notoriously stuck-in-their ways, technophobic darlings–and I mean that in the nicest possible way, since I’m one of them) have actually started to use the Internet and Web 2.0 in the most amazing (almost unthinkable) ways.

First, according to the ABA Journal, legal blogger Robert Ambrogi has come up with a list of 16 reasons lawyers should use Twitter. And, if that weren’t amazing enough, the U.S. Supreme Court (yes, that’s the Supreme Court of the United States) now has a Twitter news feed.

Second, and also from the ABA Journal, a federal trial judge has ruled that a blogger may provide live blog coverage (gasp!) of a trial taking place in his courtroom, as long as she sits in the back and doesn’t disturb anyone with her laptop tappings.

Finally (and possibly most mind-blowing of all), the ABA Journal reports that Santa Clara University Law School is  recruiting students through Second Life (that virtual world that remains as foreign to me as the Land of Oz), and that “[o]ther schools, including Stanford, Harvard and Princeton, have used Second Life to teach classes, hold labs and create virtual libraries.” The Journal cites The Tech Chronicles blog of the San Francisco Chronicle as its source.

The legal profession embracing new technology? Who woulda thunk it? You think it may have a little something to do with the need to attract younger people toward legal careers? Not to mention the influx of younger journalists and bloggers covering legal news? And the media’s move toward digital content in general? I suspect it might.

Too Much Information

I know the music and presentation are calculated to awe and overwhelm. I realize (as an information professional) that I don’t know what the sources of all this information are, so I can’t evaluate their reliability. But still . . .

. . . this just blows my mind.

Okay, One Last Shot

This was just too good to pass up. I thought I heard boo-ing when I watched this on TV, but I missed the singing. (via The Heavy Metal Librarian)

Hey, he-ey . . . good-bye!

Last Laughs

Just before the Bush Administration took its final bow, a couple of bloggers took some wonderful last minute jabs at Dubya and company.

First, a report on what George Bush arguably did best from The Heavy Metal Librarian.

Plus a retrospective from Keith Olbermann: eight years in eight minutes–impressive. (Via Political Teen Tidbits)

On a More Serious Note

They just don’t write speeches like this anymore.

Watch. Listen. Be awed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Would Be So Proud

There’s really nothing I can add to this. Res ipsa loquitur–the thing speaks for itself. (Video via Fafblog.)

“I Am Not a Number!”

I was reading some of the retrospectives on Patrick McGoohan’s career and I particularly liked this one from The Independent (and how fitting a title for the publication).

More than any of the other stories, this one emphasized what a maverick the actor was–as stubbornly individualistic as the character he played in The Prisoner. And an anti-consumerist voice ahead of his time.

So long, Patrick. Or, should I say, be seeing you?

Help Wanted: ISO Political Comic Material

The presidential inauguration is nigh and that means soon we won’t have George Bush to kick around anymore.

Rosa Brooks reflects on how much we’ll miss the Bush malapropisms and the wonderful, warm sense of unity we got in hating the guy.

Kind of like when Richard Nixon resigned. Gerald Ford wasn’t one to inspire impassioned hate–not like Tricky Dick, anyway. A woman named Squeaky Fromme did try to shoot Ford, and I always wondered–why?

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The issue is “Where will we get our political comedy?” “What will Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, David Letterman and many others do for material now?” “Against whom will we direct our collective hate?”

Fear not, folks. When it comes to the government, I have complete faith that, no matter who’s in charge, someone in it somewhere will do something so boneheaded, the comedians will mine it for plenty of laughs.

He Was Number Six

Such sad, sad news . . . but it was bound to happen eventually. Patrick McGoohan has died. McGoohan played John Drake (splendidly, I might add) on the TV show Secret Agent Man and had some wonderful parts in the movies Silver Streak and Braveheart, as well as a couple of Emmy-winning appearances in the show Columbo. But I’ll always remember him most fondly in that surreal masterpiece known as The Prisoner.

What a wonderful actor he was. What a distinctive voice–that clipped speaking style that the LA Times critic Peter Rainer called “perhaps the most villainous enunciation in the history of acting.”

Read more about McGoohan here and about the fabulous show Secret Agent Man (aka Danger Man) here.

Oh, just so sad.