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Thursday, September 9. 2010
We are closed today for the Jewish new year, which ends at sundown tonight. I will be checking phone messages and emails tonight. We will reopen tomorrow, Friday.
Monday, September 6. 2010
Here is a great interview of my teacher and friend Jun Yasuda around the time of the 2010 Hiroshima anniversary peace walk. This is the first interview video I have found of Jun-san; it captures her essence excellently.
Thursday, September 2. 2010
Meeting my teacher and friend Jun Yasuda is a transformative experience in itself. Joining her for a peace walk is all the more incredible. Once again, Jun-san helps lead a peace walk starting on September 11, and finishing Septmeber 21. This walk will begin on September 11 at Ground Zero, going through such places as Syracuse, Onandoga, Saratoga Springs, and the Grafton Peace Pagoda, ultimately finishing at Troy on the International Day of Peace celebration. I will be in court almost every business day during the peace walk. If you go, please let me know.
Wednesday, September 1. 2010
Usually, about the most noteworthy things that happen on the streets outside my Silver Spring, Maryland, office – except for the time I was floored meeting Jane Goodall just a block away, near her then U.S. headquarters -- are such events as the closing of the Electric Shaver repair shop and museum, in the face of rising rents surrounding the downtown development that looks like so many other outdoor shopping mall-office-condo complexes that obliterate the truer, even if grittier, flavor of the surroundings they replace. The Discovery Channel headquarters two blocks down the street from me replaced the Tastee Diner, which seemed to have stubbornly resisted earlier likely overtures to buy the diner’s real estate parcel for erecting a much larger building. Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead comic-strip chronicled the relocation of the Tastee a decade ago to a half block from my current office. The restaurant serves meat, and the vegetables did not taste so Tastee, so I have stayed away, but Bill Griffith likes diners, including in Connecticut to which he transplanted. Early this afternoon while at the D.C. Superior Court, just eight miles down the street from me, I learned about an event more surreal than Zippy’s take on the relocation of the Tastee Diner. I learned that at the Discovery Channel building that replaced the Tastee Diner site, a man had taken hostages, streets were being blocked off by cops, I would be letting my staff leave for the day, and I would not get back to my office until after the alleged hostage taker, James Lee, had been shot and killed. For the rest of the afternoon, I transferred my office business to the Bethesda, Maryland, conference center that is part of the company providing me offsite meeting space. On the way back to my office at around 8:00 p.m., closed was the entrance to Colesville Road, which passes by the north side of the Discovery Channel building. Fortunately, nobody was physically wounded, nobody, that is, but the alleged hostage-taker James Lee. On the one hand, I want to depict James Lee’s alleged actions as a rare aberration that does not justify tightening the criminal justice system, imposing harsher sentences, forcing more people into mental hospitals, and reversing the erosion of the death penalty machine, On the other hand, we are all connected in one way or another. That does not automatically mean that others are at fault for Lee’s actions. On the other hand, the question remains whether he would have taken today’s actions had more people reached out to him with caring from the outset and through today. On local news radio WTOP, a news announcer said that the Discovery Channel hostage situation had ended happily. At the auto shop at the end of the day, one of the staff seemed pleased about the skills of the shooter who killed Mr. Lee. Later in the evening, someone from out of state told me it was good that Mr. Lee got shot. Am I disappointed that Mr. Lee got shot, and dead at that? Not necessarily, although I wish to know more, including whether the sharpshooter had an opportunity to incapacitate Mr. Lee by maiming rather than killing Mr. Lee; possibly not if the shooter was too far from him. Do I feel that we would have a more peaceful and harmonious society if we reduced the disconnect that so many people feel among each other, if people did not so quickly feel “good” to learn that a hostage taker had been shot dead, and if we continued working harder and more caringly to finding nonviolent and non-incarceration approaches to so-called deviant behavior? Yes, and that responsibility to reduce the disconnect starts with me.
Tuesday, August 31. 2010
By Jon Katz, a Virginia and Maryland criminal defense lawyer and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Montgomery County, and beyond, pursuing the best possible results for clients. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com. It is time for me to buy a new laptop computer. What do you recommend for a lightweight laptop that withstands being dropped sometimes; runs quickly enough on the Internet and with DVD's/CD's; and runs with a good amount of power, speed and memory? Although I have not used Apple products before -- and have felt non-plussed by the excessive chatter about iPhones and iPads each time a new version is introduced -- now I need to make a practical decision whether to buy any of the following Apple products. A colleague recommends the following items, with the following information; I welcome your input: - This colleague uses an old MacBook Pro, and an iPAD. Perhaps he uses the iPad as an alternative to upgrading his old MacBook. He is able to store discovery on the iPAD, including videos. He has found less resistance from detention facilities to bring the iPAD than a laptop. Do iPAD's run DVD's and CD's? - My colleague likes his 3G iPhone, although it can be slow sometimes. The free case is needed to resolve dropped calls in the iPhone4. There is a heavy battery case by Mophie when the ordinary battery is not long-lasting enough. A local iPhone user suggests bewaring using an iPhone while AT&T remains the provider of phone service.
How well does an iPAD integrate with a PC versus with a Mac notebook computer? Thanks for your thoughts.
Wednesday, August 18. 2010
Do people really die when their physical hearts forever stop beating? Or, is physical death an artificial marker for the next chapter in one’s existence? Whatever the answer, those who have given selflessly and beneficially to others live on through their positive actions even after their hearts stop beating. For that reason, rather than saying such people have died, I usually prefer saying they have left their body or the planet, a term I first heard from my friend Trudy Morse. On August 16, 2010, fellow criminal defense attorney M. Elizabeth Kent left her body. Not yet having found any obituaries for Elizabeth nor any other biographical information about her other than numerous of her published appellate cases, I wanted all the more to pay this brief tribute to Elizabeth. In the early 1990’s, before the Internet was widely used and available, and before questions and ideas could be bandied about on non-existent email listservs, I met Elizabeth Kent, whom I particularly knew as having a strong focus on criminal appellate work. When I handled my first criminal appeal in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals around a decade ago, I called Elizabeth, in the process of assuring that I had a firm grasp on the peculiarities of handling D.C. criminal appeals, including the typical need there to move to stay appellate proceedings in order first to pursue post conviction arguments in the trial court, so as to handle both trial and post conviction matters on appeal. Whenever I spoke with Elizabeth, she was always patient, kind, and interested in helping out. Her full focus on her clients was such that when I would call her, sometimes she would suggest that I call her at least a few days later as she completed a legal brief for an existing client. It always is best to thank people when they still are on the planet. Also, particularly in case people are aware of thanks after they leave the planet, that is another good time to give thanks. Thanks, Elizabeth, for you.
Sunday, August 8. 2010
Decades passed for me to learn how at once to be mindful of countless people’s misery and to do my share helping to alleviate misery, while also finding a way to enjoy life lest I become useless in helping others. I ultimately recognized that if I wait to truly enjoy life until humans stop oppressing humans, I will never enjoy life; and if human oppression ends, there will still be human misery from natural disasters, disease, and bodily death. The Dalai Lama helped me learn to be joyful even in the face of human misery. Thich Nhat Hanh urges the importance of seeking peace while smiling. His original calligraphy behind my desk says “breathe and smile” inside a Zen incomplete circle. Fortunately, I learned these vital lessons in time for my son to be born over four years ago. In time he will learn more about the constant human sufferings that come from human rights violations, natural disasters, disease, and bodily death. In that spirit, I have figured out how to make sense both out of human misery and the simple joys of Lego, where on the same day that my boy and I went to a local Lego extravaganza, including a computerized Rube Goldberg contraption that took hundreds of hours to complete (see the contraption with the red balls, by Brian Mausolf), blogger Scott Greenfield posted a photo of 66-year-old Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who on June 11, 1963, in Saigon followed a centuries-old practice of self-immolation, in this instance protesting government persecution of Buddhists. (See more about Thich Quang Duc here, here, here, and here (caution, as this is a video of Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation).) Though I do not think I would carry out such a form of protest, it appears that he had reached a high level of mindfulness. I spoke not long ago with an American-born Buddhist monk who told me that he was inspired very much by Thich Quang Duc quite sometime before this American-born monk became a monk. I was deeply traumatized by the self-immolation photo of Thich Quang Duc, which I first saw too young, at around five or six years old. I was also deeply traumatized from seeing a photo of the 1972 napalming in a Vietnamese village that resulted in the image of a naked girl, Kim Phuc, running desperately for safety but still getting severely burned by the napalm, and the 1968 photo of Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém summarily executed on the street by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, a general of police in South Vietnamese, close in time to when those photos were taken. Of course, the trauma I suffered paled in comparison to the victims of such violence. The trauma has not disappeared, but has healed significantly. Unfortunately, for decades, I let trauma eat at my insides over all the human rights violations and misery of war surrounding me. As I said, folks like the Dalai Lama have taught me critical lessons to transcend that. So has my boy.
Sunday, August 1. 2010
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com. I post this video not because it is reliable or not, and not because I have watched the entire video of one hour and three quarters, but because I have wondered for years what the side effects are of psychological drugs, and I will watch this video as part of that concern. This video is by Gary Null, who certainly is not without controversy over at least some of his views.
Sunday, August 1. 2010
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com. These days, many people's only phones are cellphones. Many people do not check their cell voice messages -- and even allow their voicemessage boxes to reach full capacity, perhaps to prevent people from mistakenly expecting their messages will be heard -- but instead rely on texting and caller ID. However, caller ID cannot convey a message. I do not text while driving, which is among the ideal times for me to make phone calls. I cannot text from my office's land phoneline, either. Moreover, my cellphone automatically blocks caller ID from seeing my phone number, which nixes people from calling my cellphone back from caller ID. Fortunately, the [insert cellphone number]@vtext.com emailing option enables using email to send a text message to anybody's cellphone.
Friday, July 23. 2010
DANIEL'S ROWED HIS BOAT ASHORE. In honor of Daniel Schorr, who today left his body, I reprint this blog entry from July 19, 2006: Daniel Schorr and Frank Zappa - Inspirations for excellence, for standing up to abuse of power, and against complacency. Throughout my life, I have sought out people who have stood up and stuck their necks out for doing good. I found that all the more important when I joined the Maryland Public Defender's Office fifteen years ago, when some fellow public defenders seemed to think I was from Mars when I honestly answered why I left two years at a higher-paying corporate law job; because serving indigent criminal defendants was where my heart was. I learned that many of my co-workers had no preference for the defense or prosecution side; one warned me about wearing my heart on my sleeve; another said he didn't give a f--k if the jury convicted one of his clients so long as he put up a good fight. So, I sought out fellow idealistic criminal defense lawyers, often having to find them miles away at conferences of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, at the National Criminal Defense College, and at the Trial Lawyers College. I also looked outside the legal profession for inspiration for my continued idealism. Daniel Schorr and Frank Zappa provided some of that key inspiration. The lives of these two great men -- a courageous journalist fired by CBS by staying true to the highest standards of journalism, and a musician who stayed true to his music even if that meant having few top forty songs aside from "Valley Girl" -- came together in 1986, when Zappa called Schorr about "telling the news to rock fans turned off on current events," as Schorr told it. I finally experienced Zappa at a live 1984 concert, where he conducted a band -- himself saying nothing, singing nothing, and playing not a note; the night of instrumental music was his. I bumped into Schorr once at a Washington booksigning, and twice at the annual holiday parties of a neighbor plugged into the world of Watergate-era journalists and the ACLU, not yet having learned how much he had contributed to standing tough in the face of a Kremlin upset that he would not put up with its censors, in the face of his inclusion on Nixon's enemies list, and in the face of revealing a 1976 House intelligence investigating committee report that led to his suspension by CBS. Sadly, Zappa died from prostate cancer in 1993. Schorr then brilliantly conveyed the essence of Zappa, his commitment to human and musical excellence, his insistence on calling them as he saw them, and his taking on the audacity of Tipper Gore and Company to censor song lyrics through the back door (which today is a sad reality, with rated lyrics, video games, and television shows): "Talk about his popularity, and he said he was lonely. Maybe he was. Maybe the world around him was too crass, too mediocre, too homogenized. So he cursed it with dirty words, and went back to his music synthesizer, searching for new musical meanings. And ways of serving kids. His own, and the world's." This was a call against complacency and to stay true to human goodness and human excellence. Thank you, Dan, for you.
Thursday, July 22. 2010
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com. The recent Mel Gibson stories have an additional dimension for me, in that my photographer brother Jeff Katz has photographed him -- on a hired basis, not as a paparazzo -- in the past, including this photo in Migros Magazine. On a criminal defense and practical note -- not having heard any of the tapes with his allegedly racist and sexist words to Oksana Grigorieva, to reach my own conclusions -- if he did say such things it is a lesson to us all that we have much less privacy from video and audio recorded surveillance than ever before. For instance, surveillance cameras are so rampant in restaurants, retail outlets, and on too many street corners, that one has fewer places to pick the nose without having people at the other end of a camera having a good laugh. Phone calls probably get recorded more today than when Linda Tripp did so with Monica Lewinsky, even though such states as Maryland are strict about criminalizing phone taping without all parties' consent. If Gibson made such comments, that is horrendous. I will try to listen to the tapes, and also to figure out if they are of his voice, unedited, unabridged, and undoctored.
Wednesday, July 21. 2010
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com. Last year, I blogged about a man working at Trader Joe's near Annapolis Mall, who had achieved the art of happiness at work. Two days ago, I was at the same Trader Joe's at lunchtime on the way to court, and bumped into the same man, Doug, who enjoys performing magic and gags for customers. I told him about my blog entry about him, which he then looked up, and commented on here. Our days get so booked up with work, the commercial monster, commuting, eating, brushing teeth, cleaning, sleeping, and beer, that we too often overlook giving thanks and recognition where due. I did not realize how appreciative Doug would be from my blog entry, and he was. Doug, I look forward to more honking limes, three card montes, and other transcendence of daily routine.
Monday, July 12. 2010
My high school freshman social studies teacher was a smart, caring, humorous man, who also was pro-Reagan. He was fond of saying that a barometer of the level of a nation’s freedom is whether its populace is free to emigrate. That resonated with me until I learned how heavily restrictive immigration law and policies are in the United States and other countries –- particularly by the time I joined my law school’s immigration law clinic and experienced the thrill of victory helping one client obtain political asylum, and the agony of defeat with the denial of asylum at an administrative trial with another client, both of them from Ethiopia during the administration of Reagan, who did not like Ethiopia’s then-Marxist government -- even with people who have escaped war and otherwise terrorized lives.
As immigration law practice goes, seeking asylum for people probably is the most rewarding and exhilarating work –- accompanied by many frustrations trying to convince government decisionmakers -- followed by defending people facing adverse immigration consequences from criminal charges and convictions. However, tremendous authority and discretion is given to Executive Branch employees to decide the fates of such people, with very limited beneficial intervention available from the judicial branch.
Thanks to Fourth Circuit Judge King, joined by Judges Motz and Duncan –- for illustrating how dire are the straits of so many people who flee to the United States, including those victimized by the horrors of China’s forced birth control, abortions and sterilizations arising from China’s one-child-per-family policy. Jian Tao Lin v. Holder, __ F.3d _ (4th Cir., July 12, 2010).
Lin vacates and remands the affirmance of the Board of Immigration Appeals –- which is part of the Executive Branch –- of the denial of asylum by an immigration trial judge, once again an Executive Branch employee, saying: “We agree that the agency so erred [by erroneously relying on a document from the immigration case of an unrelated person, named Liu]. Predicating an adverse credibility determination on unrelated facts derived from another case [in a filing by government counsel] is manifestly contrary to law and constitutes an abuse of discretion.”
Lin gives the petitioner another shot at seeking asylum, apparently with a rehearing, but in a system where his administrative law judge apparently placed too much reliance on the arguments of government counsel, seeing that government counsel arguments in an unrelated case constituted the only document mistakenly, and therefore erroneously, relied upon by the ALJ.
This whole story is made all the more heart-wrenching in that Lin’s wife Xue Yun Zheng –- with whom he has several children, against China’s one-child policy –- was denied asylum, which does not automatically mean that Lin will be denied asylum on the next go-around, particularly since his own lawyer may have presented stronger arguments on his behalf than his wife’s lawyer did on her behalf, whether due to different legal teams or better available arguments and evidentiary support over time. If Lin obtains asylum, he will then be able to get legal immigration status for his wife as a consequence.
The United States government and populace are so quick to welcome the huge influx of Chinese imported goods –- made cheaper than U.S. goods due to lower pay levels in China, often accompanied by harsh work conditions and unfavorable labor laws, and laxer manufacturing laws (including laxer environmental laws) –- but U.S. government appellate lawyers, their superiors, or both had the gall in Lin to argue to affirm the denial of asylum to Lin even when conceding that the ALJ had erroneously relied –- heavily, apparently -- upon a document that had nothing to do with Lin’s case. One of the particularly critical areas for Obama to change is to replace such gall and lack of sufficient sensitivity with a more humane approach to asylum seekers.
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com.
Friday, July 9. 2010
Disturbing the Universe, by William Kunstler's daughters Emily and Sarah.
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com.
Thanks to a fellow criminal defense lawyer for recently circulating links to this PBS documentary on Kunstler, both in the long and abbreviated versions. I had a chance to meet Bill Kunstler in 1995 when he was invited to visit with the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association. I think I was out of town that day. I anticipated I was going to meet him at the then-upcoming Trial Lawyers College, where he was listed as a faculty member. It didn’t happen. I never met him. Two months later, he left the plane ADDENDUM: Thanks to a friend for providing this link to further audio and video of Bill Kunster. The late William Kunstler was a radical lawyer who, like myself, started out practicing mainstream civil law (in his case, small business and family law, and, in my case, civil litigation and regulatory work for financial institutions and transportation companies). Bill Kunstler inspired me with his maintaining a balance of humor while fighting for justice. For instance, he would bring coffee and donuts to the Jewish Defense League members who would protest outside his office for his representation of El Sayyid Nosair. During summers in upstate New York, he sent his daughters to a summer camp run by conservative Christians, seeing that it did not seem to cause any problems for his daughters (who perhaps littered the camp with progressive radical tracts and rants).
Friday, July 9. 2010
When I was sworn to practice before the United States District Court in Maryland, one of the judges present wished the admittees a wealthy client with plenty of legal problems. I liked more the pro bono service emphasis at my Maryland Court of Appeals swearing-in several months before. In any event, coming with the territory of private practice is following governing rules to a T about when funds may be considered as earned and, therefore, moved to an attorney’s operating account from the escrow/trust account. Just recently, D.C. Bar ethics opinion No. 355 (which matches the route number of a major road running through my county) dealt at length with this very issue. Beyond escrow-operating matters, it is critical for every law firm –- and every business, for that matter –- to create and maintain meticulously accurate financial records and systems, and to pay all bills and taxes timely. That might seem to make common sense, but many lawyers have no business world experience, and when they open solo and small practices have many matters to master for running a responsible and profitable business, and to comply with local, state, and federal government regulations concerning taxes, payroll, and non-financial compliance and reporting matters. Even with my own pre-law school experience in the business world, which mainly involved work for a year as a financial examiner at a big Manhattan bank, I would be silly to handle all my law firm’s accounting and bookkeeping matters myself. The same goes for the concept of practicing without support staff, which some of my colleagues do, even when handling multi-day trials. Ever since going duo with my former law partner Jay Marks, I have always had qualified accounting and bookkeeping assistance throughout the year. Pursuing my clients’ criminal defense is much more sexy than handling the foregoing obligations, but taking care of the foregoing obligations is essential for doing the interesting work. By Jon Katz, a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer practicing in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond. 301-495-7755. http://katzjustice.com.
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