Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Unsubstantiated Hearsay About Cheney’s Vocabulary

The Vice President is going around saying things like he's not sure if he really swore at a Senator, but he felt better afterwards (huh?), and Yes, that's not the kind of language I ordinarily use.

Consider the following to be totally unsupported hearsay: Yesterday I received an email from a reader of this blog who said he used to be in and out of Cheney's office before he was the Veep (the email was specific, I'm being vague), and that Cheney regularly used language that was not just salty but downright radioactive.

Not that swearing matters much in my book, but lying does.

If said reader wishes to say more s/he knows how to do so, although I can understand why one view of professional obligations might counsel against it.

Posted in Politics: US | 1 Comment

Comments Are Now In Season

I read an awful lot of blogs via an aggregator, which means that I only get exposed to the comments if I do some clicking. I know from the feedburner logs that a substantial fraction of the readers of this blog do the same thing. That's certainly fine—that's what the feed is for. But I thought I ought to mention to long-time readers that in the past couple of weeks the comments have heated up, and that overall the discussion on some of the more active threads has been both meaty and (with minor exceptions) breathtakingly respectful. I'm impressed, and you might be too.

So far I have had no need to revise my comments policy although of course I'm always open to suggestions on that or anything else. (The one exception may be “would you add this blog I just found to the blogroll” — I blogroll only the sites I read or scan via the aggregator. I'm certainly happy to hear about new sites, but rarely list them until I decide if I'm going to be a daily reader.)

I should also mention that I have closed the comments on a very small number of ancient posts because they were being repeatedly targeted by comment spammers. They must all be in cahoots.

Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on Comments Are Now In Season

Jon Stewart Is a National Treasure

If anything persuades me to buy a TV, it's going to be the Daily Show.

Via Over/Spun, a link to Stewart acting as a one-man truth squad.

How come the respectable media tip-toes around this stuff?

Posted in Iraq | 3 Comments

What We Learn from Microsoft’s Rules of Software Design

Item 12 on 21 Rules of Thumb – How Microsoft develops its Software, a Microsoft developer's list of rules of great software design:

“Portability is for canoes.”

Figures. Indeed, verges on abuse of a dominant position?

It's also sort of interesting to compare this list to legal task organization, for example large-team litigation. Some of the rules work perfectly, some are irrelevant.

The first rule should certainly be engraved on every lawyer's heart, and is something I always make a point of telling my students in every class I teach:

It is essential not to profess to know, or seem to know, or accept that someone else knows, that which is unknown. Almost without exception, the things that end up coming back to haunt you are things you pretended to understand but didn’t early on.

Posted in Law: Practice, Software | 5 Comments

Law, Lawyering and the Cheney Case

Scrivener's Error has a very lawyerly analysis of the Cheney decision.

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | Comments Off on Law, Lawyering and the Cheney Case

Experts Agree! OLC Botched Work on Torture!

Legal Scholars Criticize Torture Memos notes a general consensus among expert readers that the Torture Memos were so one-sided as to be incompetent, misstated basic concepts of criminal law, and misread our international obligations.

But don't worry, one of the lead authors is a court of appeals judge, and all the others still have their jobs! (At least until January.)

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | 3 Comments