UNDERDOG - JON KATZ, MARYLAND & VIRGINIA Criminal Defense Lawyer

Pakistan plunged into further and deeper violence after Benazir Bhutto's assassination. This yin-yang symbol represents the need for Pakistan and the whole world to follow a peaceful path during the fight for human rights and justice.

In 1983, fifty-one year-old opposition leader Benigno Aquino returned to the Philippines to challenge dictator Ferdinand Marcos, only to be shot dead as he exited the plane in the Philippines. Only three years older than Aquino on her return to Pakistan, main opposition leader Benazir Bhutto narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on her return there in October 2007, only to be assassinated two months later.

Regardless of one's views of Ms. Bhutto's politics and political past, her return to Pakistan brought hope of a real challenge to and change from strongman Musharraf's grip on and abuse of power, inspired courage by Bhutto's standing up against the threat of assassination, and led to a further outpouring of opposition to Musharraf's repressive ways, not only from Bhutto supporters but also from lawyers willing to stick their necks out for justice (see the November 7, 2007, Underdog blog).

Despite the many differences between the Philippines after Aquino's assassination and Pakistan after Bhutto's assassination, hope springs eternal that out of this assassination will spring a Pakistani non-violent people power sort of movement that successfully removes Musharraf (the leaders that followed Marcos were not the greatest shakes, but were better than having Marcos as dictator; in Pakistan, the key is to avoid having worse than Musharraf as his replacement). Such a non-violent path is essential, as opposed to the violent reaction of Ms. Bhutto's supporters and opponents (I am trying to learn the extent to which the killings and injuries are being caused by supporters of Bhutto as opposed to government forces and her opponents).

Clearly, Bush II needs to realize that nobody buys his recent claims before the assassination that Musharraf was good for democracy. Musharraf's removal is essential, and he needs to yield to a full and fair electoral process. Jon Katz.

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

While away from home and at a hotel this past week, I got onto a computer to check something on our website. Lo and behold, our static front page (http://markskatz.com) and Underdog blog were filtered out by so-called "child-friendly" blocking software.

I was able to access several other pages from our website, including our links page and even our First Amendment page, which includes discussion about our adult entertainment law practice. Curiously, my biographical page is blocked, but not my law partner Jay Marks's bio. I do not know which filtering software the hotel uses. Sometimes, the computer redirected from blocked pages from our site to CyberSleuth Kids, but it does not seem that filtering is provided by that website.

While individuals and private entities (as opposed to government) are free to install Internet filtering-blocking software, when people do so, they are dealing with technology that has been known even to block such websites as Planned Parenthoods (for discussing abortion).

Of course, I do not plan to change our website to pass through filtering software. If any of you have experienced the filtering of any of our webpages, please let me know. Jon Katz.

Seva Cafe in Ahmedabad, India.

"Power of One" from One Earth.

"I'm out of order? You're out of order," says Pacino's And Justice for All character to the judge in the Baltimore City Circuit Courthouse where I have appered many times. If this happened in real life -- where the defense lawyer turns on his client in front of the jury, fed up with how the powerful often get away with things the less powerful cannot -- I would be livid at Pacino's character. Eleven years after watching the movie, I entered law school. Jon Katz.

Dig to China from execution equipment purveyor Fred Leuchter's Massachusetts (he lost his prison customer base after denying the Holocaust), and see similar death penalty brutality, at a more severe magnitude.

Meanwhile, see the recanting former Virginia executioner here, including his admission that he barely knew what he was doing when executing by injection. Jon Katz.

What made presidents so fearful of giving J. Edgar Hoover the axe? (Image from Library of Congress.)

Recently revealed in the news is that then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (whose FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr.'s telephone, with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy's approval), just days after the United States joined the Korean war in 1950, proposed that the FBI be given authority to detain twelve thousand allegedly disloyal people in military prisons.

As the New York Times tells it: Hoover's proposal was for the FBI to "'apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous' to national security...The arrests would be carried out under 'a master warrant attached to a list of names' provided by the bureau. The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. 'The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,' he wrote." The New York Times further reports: "In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans 'who might be dangerous' if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people."

Fifty-two years after Tom Clark gave Hoover such approval, his son Ramsey -- who became Lyndon Johnson's last attorney general -- said he felt Mr. Hoover meant well, and did not have vicious purposes. I wonder if this New York Times piece changes his opinion on that.  

The New York Times piece ends with this chilling information: "In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal." 

The parallels between the foregoing story and the Bush II regime's actions and policies are frighteningly numerous. Jon Katz. 

While I am away for the rest of the month, I have pre-programmed Underdog to release one short blog entry daily. Also, while the blogosphere slows down for the end of the year, this might be a good time to review our archives and our static website.

The above video shows the power of the t'ai chi that I practice physically, mentally, and in the practice of law. Being interviewed is Robert Smith, who is the first Western student of t'ai chi master Cheng Man Ch'ing, with whom Professor Cheng spars in this video. The title of this blog entry comes from one of the five principles of t'ai chi, which are: relax and sink firmly rooted into the ground; separate the weight in yin-yang fashion; keep the body upright as if the head is suspended from the heavens; turn from the waist; and keep the wrists gently unbent.

Mr. Smith taught t'ai chi to my teachers Ellen Kennedy and Len Kennedy, apparently in the same place -- Glen Echo Park in Montgomery County, Maryland -- where I studied with the Kennedys, where they still teach, and where free t'ai chi practice sessions still take place every Saturday at 7:00 a.m., no matter what the weather or date. Mr. Smith was in Taiwan with the CIA when he studied with Professor Cheng and with plenty of other Chinese martial arts masters and mega-beings. Having fled to Taiwan so as not to live under Communist rule in mainland China -- where a treasure trove of t'ai chi practitioners lost many of their practicing and teaching gifts through the banning of t'ai chi during the years long Cultural Revolution -- Professor Cheng supported the United States' participation in the Vietnam war. I look beyond their politics to cherish the t'ai chi gifts they unselfishly have shared with the world

Professor Cheng ended up opening and running a t'ai chi school in Manhattan, during the era of hippies and the free love that he apparently firmly disagreed with. He upset many Chinese traditionalists by widely opening his Manhattan school to all races, rather than limiting enrollment to those with ethnic Chinese backgrounds. From that school sprouted great teachers, just as what happened with his students in Taiwan.

Professor Cheng was a master of the five classic Chinese excellences: t'ai chi, Chinese medicine, painting, poetry, and Chinese calligraphy. To master even one of the first two is a monumental feat. When I am in a tough courtroom situation, sometimes I summon strength by imagining I am accompanied by Professor Cheng, my trial practice mentor Steve Rench, and my friend and spiritual teacher Jun Yasuda. Jon Katz.