Jon's news & views

Image from NASA's website.

The Olympics always is political, ranging from nations wanting to shine a light on their Madison Avenue public relations face to nations wanting to whitewash unspeakable brutality.

The brutal and virulently racist nazi regime had its day in the sun with the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which at least was offset by the victorious track performance of Jesse Owens, an African American competitor who returned, ironically, to a deeply racist and segregationist United States, which during World War II -- during the fight against the racist nazi regime -- would continue with a racially segregated military.

Now with its day in the Olympics sun is China, whose government is extremely brutal, but not on the same level as Germany during the nazis, and apparently without the racism.

I have written several times about China's deliberate and rampant human rights violations and its efforts to carefully choreograph a Disney-ized Olympics. The real human rights face of China is not only gross human rights-violative business as usual, but also increased harassment of dissidents  in order to try to present a Chinese Neverland, censorship of foreign journalists covering the Olympics, and the deep complicity of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in censoring the Internet in China and helping rat out dissidents to Chinese authorities, who then have their human-rights-violative ways with the dissidents.  .

Have you been watching the Olympics? If so, how has your enjoyment of the Olympics been affected, or not, by the brutal reality of its government's ongoing and severe human rights violations? Jon Katz

 Isaac Hayes conducting "Theme from Shaft."

Isaac Hayes's voice was commanding and well-suited to the theme from Shaft. I remember when the film's soundtrack was released in 1971, but only remember the title theme. Two decades later I saw the film itself, which hardly measured up to Hayes's theme song.

On August 10, Isaac Hayes departed the planet. As much as I prefer to pay tribute to people before they leave the planet, I am behind on doing so. Thanks, Isaac Hayes, for you. Jon Katz.

My tireless blogging colleague Scott Greenfield has written repeatedly about (partly) consumer-driven lawyer ranking site AVVO (whose spelling can mistakenly be seen as "awo", depending on how closely one's computer screen places the vees in the word).

Having learned about AVVO from Scott's site, I answered the site's information questionnaire. Eventually, after my questionnaire information and a few client reviews, I was given a ranking of 9.4 out of ten, or "superb". Although I am happy to receive such recognition, the rankings system does not sound scientific.

On July 15, a Maryland Daily Record reporter called me for an article that appeared today, curious about her assertion that "Searching for a Maryland lawyer brings up Katz near the top of the list." If you do not want to be misquoted or distorted out of context, do not speak with a journalist; knowing this frequent risk, I still ordinarily speak freely with journalists about matters not involving my clients, with possibly the most stark example of unprofessional interviewing of me coming form the insensitivity of a reporter (and/or his news organization) engaging in what I thought was sensationalism by telling me on camera rather than off that Deborah Palfrey had killed herself, and then seeking comment -- without ever pausing the camera -- when I had nothing to do with the case.

The reporter's somewhat minor distortion in this AVVO article is in writing that I have "suggested that clients write positive reviews" on AVVO. In reality, I was answering her question about how people ended up writing the handful of AVVO reviews about me, by saying that in the past when clients thanked me deeply for my service, I would offer for them the option of sending me an anonymous testimonial for me to post to our website if they wished, and now add the option to post an AVVO review. The AVVO review is a convenient way for a client to eliminate me as the middleman in getting feedback posted.

In any event, the article confirms that AVVO's name comes from avvocato, which is the Italian word for lawyer. Curiously, whether or not intentionally, the French word for lawyer, avocat, also is the word for avocado, which is one of my favorite foods. Early on when my law partner Jay Marks and I hosted a call-in Spanish radio show "Legally Speaking: Where your cause is our cause" I got the moniker "gato" for cat/Katz, which then led to the less frequent moniker of "abogato", blending abogado for lawyer and gato for cat. The equivalent in Italian would be avvogatto.

Finishing on this tangential discussion of the word lawyer, a very persuasive, dedicated, and intelligent longtime Amnesty International activist who spoke at the invitation of my law school's Amnesty International chapter started out by saying that the law is an ass, because, in his view, it is slow and plodding to achieve beneficial change. He then asked "If the law is an ass, what are lawyers?" I did not get around to asking him if he meant assh--les, but he had me in stitches nevertheless, even though I thought such a view was hyperbole taken from frustration with the legions of lawyers who to this day focus heavily on money and little on fairness and justice. (Only a few years ago, a colleague who includes criminal defense in his practice very seriously asked if I agreed with his view that the law practice is all about making money; I strenuously disagree with him.) My laughter in response to the Amnesty International activist came in the context of  having expected that part of my law studies would involve learning the language of the oppressive enemy, so that I could more successfully battle that enemy.

In any event, AVVO probably presents serious challenges to the once predominant Martindale-Hubbell legal directory, which is driven by rankings purportedly based on peer reviews, and expanded listings arising from payments for the inclusion. (Disclaimer: Our firm pays for such a listing.)Then again, the Internet has created substantial competition throughout the for-profit sector, including shaking the previous predominance of yellow page directories.  Jon Katz

Connecticut, or is that Quinnehtukqut? (Image from Energy Information Agency's website).

Having blogged a few times about the Longest Walkers, here is an update on their activities and my meeting with some of them today.  

T'ai chi is about being as still as a mountain and powerful as a rushing river, and not about karate kicks.

Perhaps someone(s) who has had enough of my t'ai chi blogposts is playing a joke on me. Yesterday, June 26, I drove to National Airport in Virginia (I refuse to use the former president's name in the title; it was National Airport long before he took his throne at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and installed people who would have had ketchup fulfill one of the vegetable servings in the daily school lunch program. My mission: To pickup a Nipponzan Myohoji nun and another activist arriving from Japan to join the Longest Walkers. Ordinary this mission was not.

The arriving flight was delayed forty minutes, so I decided to do what I often do to kill time in airports (and sometimes while waiting for the subway to return me from court in D.C. to my office), which was to practice t'ai chi. It made all the more sense to do so, because I had not practiced it yet that day, and it is more important to practice for a few minutes every day, than to skip two days and practice a full hour on the third day. Each day of t'ai chi practice is akin to inserting at least one page into an annual book that totals three hundred sixty-five pages by the end of the year.

I found a sparsely traveled section of the arrival area, and did two rounds of the thirty-seven posture t'ai chi chuan yang style short form, as developed by t'ai chi megamaster Cheng Man Ch'ing, and as demonstrated flawlessly here by the Professor.

Perhaps partly because I have a long way to go before doing t'ai chi even one percent as well as Cheng Man Ch'ing, and perhaps just because t'ai chi is very new to many people, I get reactions running from amusement and people lampooning my moves with pages from Karate Kid, to intrigued people -- often children -- who sometimes are willing to try practicing along with me. One day practicing in the beautiful park across from our office, a Chinese woman applauded as I did the t'ai chi form, and then showed me the results of years of her own practice of what looked like something similar to t'ai chi or another form.

Perhaps one of the amused or stunned people contributed to the police coming up to me as follows. After practicing t'ai chi, I go to the men's room, and as I am starting my standing relief, a cop is near the entrance and says, "I want to talk with you when you're done." My initial reaction to myself is "F--kin' cop. Hassling me even as I am going about such private business." Outwardly and then inwardly, though, I return to t'ai chi harmoniousness and balance.

After washing my hands, and leaving the men's room, the cop is standing right outside the exit, and offers his name and his hand to shake. Who in their right mind offers to shake the hand of a stranger who's just left the men's room? Poppy on Seinfeld is but one member of a huge fraternity of men who do not put their hands under the sink before leaving the men's room. The Japanese custom of bowing over handshaking begins sounding highly preferable, unless one has a bad back. Curiously, the other two, and then three, cops watching the potential t'ai chi terrorist do not offer to shake my hand, whether for hygienic, strategic or good-cop/bad-cop purposes.

The following transpires:

Cop: My name is officer H___________________. You match the description of someone reported doing karate kicks. I just want to hear your side of the story. (Pause.) Please stand over here, so you don't block people's way.

JK: The criminal defense lawyer in me says not to answer. My other side says maybe to do so

Cop: It will be best for you to answer.

JK: Am I free to leave (as I fish my business card out of my pocket to try to get him off my back, which sometimes can backfire)?

Cop: No. You're being detained right now. Take your hands out of your pockets. You have a cellphone. (A non sequitur for fellow Zippy the Pinhead fans from a cop decidedly not wearing a muu-muu.)

Cop (continuing): Can I see some I.D.?

JK: No. (Fortunately, Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 177 (2004), supports no requirement to show cops a photo identification if one is not stopped while driving.)

Cop: No? (Feigning surprise or in actual surprise.)

JK: Here (I hand him my business card that I already had fished out, but was not required to give. Giving a cop one's photo identification makes it easier for the cop to delay the person longer by running an open warrant check and not giving the identification back right away.)

Cop: What is your date of birth?

JK: April 1, 1963. (I give it to him. It is already on our Martindale-Hubbell listing linked to our website listed on our business card).

Cop No. 2 (playing the good cop role): Excuse me sir. Would you mind stepping over here? (Another choreography direction from the cops while I am not free to leave.) All we want to know is what you were doing if you are willing to tell us.

JK: (Do I stay silent, which I tell others to do when they are suspects, or do I wear the hybrid hat of a criminal defense lawyer who stands up to cops all the time for my clients, and someone wanting to be there when my visitors arrive at the gate (how often do cops try to divide and conquer like that?)? It's the Chinese martial art of t'ai chi. I hadn't gotten around to doing it yet today.

Cop No. 2: (Already nodding her head knowingly before I finish talking). I thought so.

JK: Am I free to leave? (One of the Busted video's most essential lines.)

Cop No. 2: Yes.

My visitors arrive four minutes later, before I even have a chance to fish out my welcome sign, a practice that is the stuff of so many comedy scenes.

Less than an hour later, I am in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House with my visitors, who want to chant the Odaimoku prayer for peace, and then include me for continued chanting clockwise around the president's palace. After that, I tell a veteran Lafayette Park peace demonstrator about the foregoing incident, and he seems to be looking at me like I have just fallen off the vegetable truck. I say: "You probably get hassled all the time by the Park Police like that." "All the time," he replies, regretting that this is the case.

What lawful right did cop no. 1 have to tell me I was being detained? None. This was not a valid Terry stop -- Terry v. Ohio, 392 US 1 (1968) -- even though the Terry abortion of justice only requires reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity is afoot to briefly detain a suspect to ask questions (which questions need not be answered, aside from questions about identity, as addressed in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 177 (2004)). What crime might be afoot? Disorderly conduct (the catchall darling of cops, and a part of the unholy arrest triumvirate of disorderly conduct, assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest)? Hardly, and if my actions might have been reasonably suspected as disorderly, what is the difference whether it was my "forgiven" t'ai chi or possibly unforgiven karate kicks (by the way, t'ai chi only involves one circular kick, and three slow extended kicks, as shown by Cheng Man Ch'ing here)?

Was there reasonable suspicion concerning the Virginia abortion of a law of intoxicated in public, which cops seem to think gives them a freebee to search incident to arrest for such a charge? My last tipple was but a sip many moons ago. 

Do the Airports Authority's regulations claim to permit cops to do Terry stops without satisfying Terry. I doubt it, but plan to check.

Why, then, was I stopped by a cop with three onlooking cops focused on me rather than on less petty suspected crime (perhaps this was my inadvertent gift towards my goal of decriminalizing drugs by taking the cops away from looking out for possible drug dealers)? Was it just to mollify the so-called civilian complainant? Was it an effort to take control of someone not conforming to the usual bored approach to wating in airports? Was it a result of post-September 11 hysteria? Were some of the four cops receiving on the job training? Did it arise from the cops' failure to distinguish between the increase of people's rights as they proceed from awaiting clearance by customs and immigration authorities to going through security for arrival at the airport departing gates to being in the arrival area, as I was? Is it mimicry by cops of District of Columbia mayor Adrian Fenty's unconstitutional criminal checkpoints? Is it because cops do not want to see anybody displaying the hallmarks of lethal force (I have not come anywhere near making my t'ai chi lethal) and martial arts other than themselves? Is it a bunch of cops with too much time on their hands? Is it a bunch of cops out of touch with the truism that the police are a necessary evil that present the real risk of pulling us further into a police state rather than closer in the arms of the many civil libertarian goals championed in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence?

Will I continue practicing t'ai chi in airports, empty subway platforms, outside courts, in parks, and in my own backyard? Absolutely. Join me? Jon Katz.

The International Whaling Commission has been meeting in Chile, where apparently talk is the talk of the day, rather than much action, other than Chile's commendable declaration this week -- apparently a reaffirmation -- that the nation bans whale slaughter.  

Why stop at protecting whales against slaughter? Do people focus so much against whaling in order to prevent the extinction of at-risk whale species? Or, do people also oppose whaling based on whales being so highly intelligent and loveable? If the latter holds true, why draw the line at whales? Intelligence is witnessed in many other mammals, too, including the dolphins that get caught up fatally in tuna-catching nets. Why draw the line at mammals, then? Do birds not display high intelligence, for instance in finding their way to a specific warm location in the winter, and back to a specific location in the summer? Why draw the line at birds? Do fish not share many of the same qualities as humans? They have hearts, livers, kidneys, brains, and gonads. Is it okay, then, to eat shellfish, which do not flap around in desperation when removed from the water? The typical way to cook lobsters and crabs is to burn them alive; what did they do to deserve that?  

Many anti-vegetarians then ask: Why draw the line at land and sea animals? Why not just stop eating all plants and animals, thus leaving nothing else to eat? Few people are going to allow themselves to die for such a theory. Of course, I recognize that even if it is assumed that plants feel no pain nor awareness at being alive and being killed, insects are killed in the process of raising and harvesting plant food, and, as a vegetarian, I do not believe in eating insects, either. My best answer, then, is for food consumption to be focused on a harm reduction approach, so as to reduce the harm not only to the living things being killed for human food consumption, but also to reduce mistreatment of workers who ultimately bring food to the market, to reduce environmental degradation from food production (including fecal waste and methane/flatus pollution from livestock), to reduce the harm caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers and genetic plant modification, and to reverse the elimination of  animal habitats that result from making way for livestock and growing fields. 

Protecting whales, then, is but an important start on the road to giving more protection to all land, air and water animals.

Justifiably, much has been said and written about the possibility of no painless method for executing humans, let alone the mental torture involved in awaiting an inevitable execution. Why stop there? Why think for a moment that a dinner of animals is not the product of suffering during the animal's short life, suffering while seeing and feeling and hearing fellow animals being slaughtered, and knowing that this will be the witnessing animal's fate in just a few moments, and suffering at the moment of slaughter?

I ask a favor to all meat eaters: Before you eat your next piece of meat, poultry or fish, please give a name to the animal from which this flesh came, whether it be Bob, Carole, Ted, Alice or anyone else. If you are eating a hamburger, sausage, or hot dog, it may be a good idea to give the meat several names, as hamburgers and sausages are a convenient way for the meat industry to gather up the scraps from the meatcutting machines. The more we give a name, face, heart, and soul to the humans and non-human animals upon whom we cause suffering, I am convinced we will reduce the suffering. Jon Katz.

ADDENDUM I: Back to whales, yesterday's Australian newspaper reports that "Japan says it is misunderstood, denies the 1000 whales it hunts each year for scientific purposes despite a 1986 moratorium are making it to the dinner table, and says it is also in favour of conservation." Either that is an untruth, or else the Japanese fish markets are obtaining whales for food some other way. As I wrote last January:

From Library of Congress's website.

Singapore is a fascinating place. Certainly, the government for decades has sought an overly-antiseptic and censoring city nation, while jailing dissidents, caning convicts, and executing people for possessing as little as 1.2 pounds of marijuana (with my having snapped a photo of some smiling customs officials under a banner near the Malaysian border proclaiming the death penalty for drug trafficking). Knowing all of that, still I spent a few days there after the bar exam in 1989, as an international air travel hub on my way to a much more colorful and fascinating time in Thailand, starting with an inexpensive Bangkok guesthouse located alongside corrugated rooftop homes near Kao San Road, and followed by a northern trek that included everyone pushing an overloaded converted pickup truck out of the mud numerous times on day one, followed by joining some singing moonshine-drinking revelers at the tailend of a wedding celebration in a tribal village.

I got a slight peak on the inside of Singaporean society while spending some time with a friend who had just relocated there and staying as a guest at the home of his brother -- who described himself as conservative -- and spending time with some of the family members going about their daily activities. Part of what makes Singapore so fascinating is its overlapping Chinese, Malay and Indian influences found in such a small geographic area. I write more about my visit to Singapore in the last several paragraphs here, including my surreal midnight arrival at a near-empty airport luggage carousel area with unsmiling machine-gun toting security offset by nobody asking about the contents of my baggage, and my possibly even more surreal experience meeting a fellow diner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant who thought he was paying me a high compliment by likening me to a young Richard Nixon with his new legal career ahead. My time in Singapore was all the more interesting by having gotten off the beaten path several times.

Fortunately, Singapore is not the monolithic lockstep place that many of its rulers have sought. Numerous Singaporean dissidents are willing to speak out, and to do so in a vibrant, fearless, calm, intelligent and apparently effective way, as detailed further below. As much as civil liberties remain under assault in the United States -- with it being essential constantly to refight and re-win previous civil liberties victories -- plenty of dissident actions that would get little if any suppression in the United States routinely get suppressed in Singapore.

Here are some recent examples of inspirational dissident activity in Singapore:

- On May 17, 2008, dissidents screened One Nation Under [Lee Kuan] Yee, without first submitting it to Singapore's ubiquitous censors. Kudos to those who produced the film, the dissidents who screened the film, and Singapore's Peninsular-Excelsior Hotel for allowing the film's screening (although I suspect the hotel did not recognize the implications of the screening or the screening itself).

- Here and here is a March 15, 2008, attempt to proceed with a rights march in Singapore.

- Gopalan Nair is a lawyer who grew up in Singapore, dissents openly from its government, and practices law in the United States, where he obtained citizenship. He has intentionally blogged himself into being brought into court on pending criminal libel charges relating to Lee Kuan Yew, who previously governed Singapore in authoritarian fashion, and still participates in the running of the government.

- A longtime Singaporean dissident is Francis Seow, who went into self-exile many years ago.

- The Singapore Democratic Party is active with numerous of the current protests.

If you visit Singapore, please let me know. I wonder how much else of the nation has changed after my last visit there nineteen years ago. Jon Katz.

Critical to practicing law is placing clients ahead of money. To do the opposite likely will result in less income for a lawyer, or else in income not sufficiently or properly earned.

Fortunately, many lawyers believe in the importance of doing good for society on the road to doing well; staying committed to social justice while practicing law; doing pro bono and low bono work; and helping others (including competitors) rise along with the lawyer, rather than stepping on their throats and heads in the process.

The Community Legal Resource Networks is a living example of focusing the practice of law on doing good while doing well. In Maryland, this approach is seen in the Civil Justice Network, which originated at the University of Maryland Law School.

When law is practiced in the foregoing way, the concept of the law firm as a business that needs to be run efficiently and competitively becomes less distasteful than if the idea were to make money at all costs no matter the endeavor. In that spirit, below are some ideas and idea sources for self-employed lawyers and all other small business owners to run profitable and rewarding businesses:

Praised be Foonberg. Lawyer Jay Foonberg remains an indispensable adviser and cheerleader for lawyers to be successful as solo and small practitioners, as I discuss here.

The E-Myth: A fellow Trial Lawyers College attendee recommends the E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael R. Gerber. Many of you may already have heard of Michael Gerber and his E-Myth philosophy that appears to be keeping him busy with books, seminars, and consulting; numerous other people write along E-Myth lines. I have just started reading the foregoing book, so will learn how much of his words and promotion make sense rather than any Tony Robbins-type overhype mixed in.

Dealing with the IRS. The same lawyer who recommends E-Myth Revisited also recommends Don't Let The IRS Destroy Your Small Business: Seventy-Six Mistakes To Avoid. At first blush, finding ways to reduce tax payments sounds like a favorite topic of right wingers and rabid capitalists. On the other hand, federal and state taxes are a big expense for businesses. At the very least, businesses need to have sound financial and accounting practices and controls, to protect their assets from theft and other loss, to sail through any IRS audit, and to pass credit reviews by vendors and lenders.

Taking some pages from Sun Tzu. When buying E-Myth Revisited, I came across and bought Gary Gagliardi's Sun Tzu's The Art of War for the Business Warrior, in which the author juxtaposes each page of The Art of War with some excellent related tips for entrepreneurs. Some of the book's advice also applies well to battling litigation opponents, seeing that the Art of War is about competition in the first place. 

BlackBerry Freeware. A busy trial lawyer needs access to email and other computer technology both in the office and on the road. I recently bought a BlackBerry, and have found some of the following freeware and other useful links:  

- The BlackBerry freeware page. In addition to freeware, this site includes some useful email addresses for organizing information.

- Mobile file manager software; spreadsheet; document file viewer; BlackBerry utilities; RSS reader, to review blogs; media player; software from Gwhiz; New York Times in BlackBerry-compatible format; expense tracking; ringtones; games, for a change of pace; and EBook reader.

- For pay, here is MS Word and Excel-compatible software for BlackBerries.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their experience and knowledge with me over the years for running a law firm that is at once compassionate, successful, and rewarding. Jon Katz.

Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website).

Checking email only at the office has become too inefficient, to the point of offsetting the bliss of not having email to deal with when away from my wired computer.

Therefore, having read some of the articles comparing the BlackBerry and iPhone, I seek Underdog readers' input before making a final decision. Please recommend one of the two phones (and any particular models of the two) for my following modest needs:

- Good phone reception and sound. Good speakerphone and good headset, for talking and driving.

- Efficient management and sum