DAY SEVENTY SEVEN

Interesting news from the legal world today. The Supreme Court ruled that police attaching a GPS device onto a car constitutes a search, so they may need to get a warrant. Even Scalia thought that it may be required, while Alito thinks it's always required for tracking over long periods of time.

If you don't read postsecret, you should. My favorite one is from a few weeks ago and includes the typical gamut of life, death, sadness and happiness.

Are you eating gay food or straight food?

US politics edition part two: contraception is now covered to the same extent as viagra under health plans.

US politics part III - death penalty!! Remember that guy whose appeal of his conviction for the death penalty was totally messed up because the attorneys assigned to work with him quit Sullivan and Cromwell and the mailroom sent back all information about his appeals? Check this website for a fuller history along with a ton of links about it. Whoops. Read the stuff - it's horrible - but at least he gets an appeal, even if it was unwilling to say that he had inadequate assistance of counsel. That Scalia!

In his opinion, Scalia argues that Maples was, in fact, being represented by legal counsel during the appeals process because other lawyers at the firm had helped with the pro bono case. The theoretical possibility that someone at Sullivan & Cromwell was still secretly working on Maples’s case cannot be taken seriously. The most disturbing part of Scalia’s dissent, however, is his argument that the Court’s decision “invites future evis­ceration of the principle that defendants are responsible for the mistakes of their attorneys.” Scalia seems to take for granted that reconsidering penalties against defendants for their poor legal representation would be a bad thing. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found that Maples’s failure to meet the deadline was legally excusable. “A client cannot be charged with the acts or omissions of an attorney who has abandoned him,” she wrote.

Coleman v. Thompson. According to the decision, if Maples’s lawyers missed a deadline because of gross negligence rather than outright abandonment, Maples would have had no legal recourse.

And I just saw xkcd's SOPA protest. I love it as much as I love the webcomic. And its references to calvin and hobbes.

Finally, 1/998001 generates a fascinating series.