Batchin’ It Cookbook: Corn on the Cob

I wish I had known this years ago.

Take corn on the cob, still in the husk.

Put in the microwave for two minutes.

Eat.

It’s that simple, which is why this is an appropriate recipe for the Batchin’ It Cookbook.

How to Resize PDF Files: A4 to Letter

I use Lulu Press in the same way I use Kinko’s: if I’d rather have a file printed and bound for easy reference, I send it to Lulu and for roughly the same cost of photocopying, I have a printed book. A problem came up in that Lulu will not print A4 files, they have to be resized.

Several of the solutions I came across were rather byzantine or expensive, but here’s one that works, at least on Windows machines. Install a pdf printing program such as Bullzip. Then, set the printing preferences to provide for letter-size paper. Print the A4 pdf file to the Bullzip printer—give the newly created file a different name—and now you have your letter-sized pdf file. You can also reverse the process and resize a letter-sized pdf file to A4. 

Even though the Mac OS has native pdf support, printing the file and re-saving it as a pdf wouldn’t work despite specifying a new page size.

In theory this technique would work to resize letter or A4 formatted files to 6 x 9 size, but such a great reduction will probably affect legibility.

Slow Law

 

 

 

I own and use an Underwood manual office typewriter, built in the early 1960’s (the advertisement is for an Underwood electric). I have a Macbook as well, but I can type an envelope on the Underwood faster than printing on the Macbook, the desktop, or any of the other technological marvels in the office.

During WWII typewriters were considered armaments and essential because all military orders had to be typed. We fought a war, well, more than one really, without the personal computer. Does the practice of law really require a pc?

The day to day practice of law, unfortunately, is all about squabbling, usually to no real purpose. There’s a goal sought to be reached, of course, but usually the squabbling is only tangentially related to the goal and more often than not, gets in the way of the settlement of disputes or the determination of fact.

The courts are clogged. It can take two months in Miami-Dade county to get a motion calendared before a judge. Cases take years to resolve.

Business moves at the speed of business, which is most definitely not the speed of law. Most business people don’t recognize that when they need a dispute resolved, going to court is like going to the emergency room. There’s always a long line and the attention paid to you is based on triage.

I remember a case out of Ft. Lauderdale from a few years back. In the context of some otherwise unnoteworthy squabble, one attorney complained that he could not fax documents to his opponent because, well, his opponent didn’t have a fax. Faxes these days are old technology, though from time to time they can still be useful. But the Florida 4th D.C.A. would not impose a requirement on an attorney to have a fax. Presumably, there would similarly be no requirement to have access to e-mail, Facebook or Twitter.

Do any of these tools make sense in a world of clogged courthouses? Why do you need to communicate with me TODAY if the case won’t be resolved for months? Wouldn’t plain old U.S. mail suffice?

So what if you simply avoided modernity in the practice of law? Would anything really change? The slow food movement is gaining traction throughout Europe. Is there a lesson here for lawyers?

The movie Secretary starring Maggie Glynhaal imagined a law office without computers, where carbon paper and typewriters were the sole tools. The series Mad Men inspires nostalgia for the days when a copy machine was an expensive novelty.

So, what if?

Written communication comes but once every day. There is time to consider a reply, for the earliest you could send a reply is the next day. That means you have the opportunity to sleep on all your responses. That’s not such a bad thing.

It’s easy to deal with e-mail. Just press “delete”. I have over a thousand unread e-mails in my inbox. I trust that these are unimportant. Some people simply declare e-mail “bankruptcy”, get a new e-mail address and start over.

It’s not so easy to simply ignore a letter. True, you can throw it in the wastebasket, but mail demands to be answered. If a letter is sent by certified mail, you can’t pretend that you never received it.

I’m wondering, because I have to get back to work answering e-mails: what are the other advantages of Slow Law?

Khalid “Sheikh” Mohammed: Part Two

During World War II, captured enemy soldiers were put in POW camps in different locations in the United States. I seem to recall that one was in Kansas; I knew someone who had briefly served there.  Eight German spies disembarked from U-boats in 1942. All eight were arrested, and then:

“By June 27, 1942, all eight saboteurs had been arrested without having accomplished one act of destruction. Tried before a Military Commission, they were found guilty. One was sentenced to life imprisonment, another to thirty years, and six received the death penalty, which was carried out within a few days.”

It is not necessary to create new courts, procedural systems, etc. to deal with Khalid Mohammed. He waged war against the United States. He should be treated the same as the eight German saboteurs, under the same rules, but on U.S. soil at a military facility.

He is not a mere delinquent. In response to his attack, the United States waged war: first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. It does less violence to the Geneva Conventions and our own criminal justice system to try Khalid Mohammed in a U.S. military court than to either try him under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or in semi-secret tribunals located in a base in Cuba kept open during the past fifty years simply to annoy Fidel Castro.

USA v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

This case is such a bad idea that I really don’t know where to start. Let’s start with torture.

Professor Alan Dershowitz and others seek to justify torture (euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques”) due to the “ticking time bomb” scenario. In the context of that scenario, they may well be right, though I think there are good arguments on both sides.

The problem is that Khalid Sheikh (“Sheikh isn’t a middle name in Arabic, by the way, it’s a title. When I read it I almost want to laugh) Mohammed was tortured in excess of 150 times, if the news reports are correct.

Torture has been banned in the federal criminal justice system since at least the 1940’s, and in the various state systems since the 1960’s due to cases like Miranda, Gideon and others. If a federal judge doesn’t suppress Khalid Mohammed’s statements, then Miranda—any many other cases—are meaningless. With so many calling for Khalid’s head on a platter, including both the Secretary of State and the President, it will take a brave federal judge indeed to make such a decision.

The government’s effort in avoiding the torture issue is ridiculous. The government states that after torturing Khalid Mohammed over 150 times it sent in a group of interrogators who had not participated in the torture. The idea is that they will not be tainted by exposure to the information obtained through torture.   This is no different from an elaborate good cop/bad cop scenario in which the defendant plays nice with the good cop to prevent the return of the bad cop, who, after all, has only tortured him 150 times.

So, if the statements are suppressed, what other evidence is there? Perhaps there is enough to convict, but perhaps not. More than likely—if the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine still has any validity—not. Losing a criminal prosecution against Khalid Mohammed is unthinkable; yet if the system is fair, this is the likely result. What’s worse is that such a trial will validate torture. Think of the Youtube video of th Oklahoma State Trooper strangling the African-American EMT firefighter if you think that such validation is meaningless and won’t trickle down.

The U.S. is setting itself up for a show trial of no precedential value. Which is little better than shooting him “while trying to escape.” In a way, we’d be better off than with this ill-considered prosecution. 

Broken Promises

We voted for the Democrats because Pelosi said she would end the war.

It didn’t happen.

We voted for Obama because he said he would end the war.

He hasn’t.

Law 2.0

Fedex, DHL.

Fax.

E-mail.

Facebook

Twitter.

What’s next?

Here is a progression of tools which increase the velocity of communication. During the heyday of the courier services, before the widespread adoption of the fax machine, you could have your work delivered pretty much anywhere in the country the next day. When the fax machine came along, you could fax documents directly to a judge’s chambers. This was great, but it didn’t last: the judges didn’t like it. They changed the rules so that you had to ask permission to send a fax.

In international practice, e-mail has taken over. It’s the most practical method for communication from continent to continent, but there are two problems. The first is reliability. Unless you get a response, you can’t be sure that your e-mail was received. Secondly, sometimes attachments are too large and you have to send them by courier service or by post instead.

One of the most frequently seen complaints about lawyers is that they don’t keep their clients advised as to the status of their case. If your clients are in prison this is more of a challenge than you would think. You can’t send an imprisoned client a fax. Or an e-mail. Or a Twitter (or is it, God forbid: a “twit”?) Clients at liberty are easy to contact. You can send a fax or e-mail. If your client is too poor to afford a fax machine or cannot make it to even the public library to (freely) access a (free) e-mail account, then you may want to pay some attention to the issue of how that client is going to pay you.

The point is, with all of these technological advances, there’s no reason not to keep clients informed.

Welcome New Readers

I would like to welcome a new reader to the blog. You know who you are.

A Comprehensive Police Report

A purse-snatcher took off with a woman’s $40 black satin purse as 10:50 pm February 1 as she was entering her car, parked near the corner of Commodore Plaza and Main Highway in the Grove.

Among the items stolen: a $300 pair of prescription sunglasses, $35 in cash, a $150 cellular phone and a $10 pair of lace underwear.

–from The Miami Herald, Thursday, February 11, 1999.

Literature is news that stays news.

–Ezra Pound

Nun Arrested in Street Bust

The Missionaries of Charity are a Catholic religious order respected for their work amongst the poor. Mother Theresa of Calcutta was one of the Order’s most well-known members, but many others perform their good works in anonymity.

In Miami, of course, it’s another story.

On these cities mean streets, an elderly nun somehow interfered—or so it is alleged—with a beat cop trying to make an arrest of a homeless person. I don’t know whether or not the homeless person was arrested, but the interfering nun, wearing the iconic white habit with three blue stripes on the headdress made famous by Mother Theresa, was taken into custody.

She was wearing the same habit during the perp walk after making bond. In Miami, convents must have bail bondsmen on retainer.

Just in case.