Years ago, when I was practicing at Houston, Vinson & Elkins had the practice of sending around a list of associates and their billable hours, in rank order.  These sheets were called the "hero sheets," and at the less-sexy, less-hip Baker Botts, we were just glad we didn't have them.  I have no idea if V&E still does this or if any other firms followed suit, but it just seemed unsavory to me, although sometimes I myself wanted to scream in the halls, "Has anyone noticed how many hours I billed this month?"  (As an aside, I found other ways to signal my assiduousness.  Others kept clothes in their office to change into should the wind up in the office for more than 24 hours.  Not me.  I wanted people to notice!)

Now, Matt Bodie at Prawfsblawg wants to compile a list of articles that were accepted during this spring submission season.  Although Matt acknowledges that SSRN and Bepress do a good job of disseminating information regarding new scholarship, Matt thinks that a round-up, similar to an entry-level hiring roundup or lateral hiring roundup, is a good idea.  Apparently, he already has had people emailing him information and will start posting next week.  My question is whether this round-up has substantive, informational value or is it merely a hero sheet?

Obviously, lists of billable hours give no new substantive value to the reader beyond a method to rank associates against each other.  Lists of new scholarship, with links to papers, do.  I keep up on goings on in my field (and among my friends) by reading through the SSRN emails that I get with listings of new papers.  Matt's list could also provide this value to those who don't subscribe to SSRN.  Matt's list will also tell you where the paper will ultimately be published (which SSRN listings also do if known at the time), and some may think this information adds value.  Depending on how arbitrary you believe the submission process to be, you may think that the publication information gives the reader some sort of certification value, so you can sort through the publications and allocate your scarce reading time more wisely.  However, Matt's list wants to communicate only certain kinds of certification value and substantive value.  Only articles that went into the submission process will be listed.  Not essays or book reviews, or even full-length articles solicited by a law journal in connection with a symposium.  So even if you had a ground-breaking article that was solicited by [name your prestigious law review], that article is not relevant to the list either for substantive or certification purposes.  So basically, it is sort of a hero sheet -- here are the winners of this season's submission lottery!

Before readers start suspecting sour grapes, I will disclose that I sent out The Undercivilization of Corporate Law this season and recently accepted a placement that makes me very happy indeed.  I know that my co-bloggers who submitted were even more successful!  However, readers may accuse me of another bias.  Perhaps there are scholars out there who are very proud of their placements, and rightfully so, and would like to sing the news from the rooftops.  I have a rooftop; it's called Conglomerate.  I can toot my own horn any time.  Why should I disdain others for doing the same thing by submitting to Matt's list?  I don't.  I'll probably go ahead and submit my info to Matt also, just to show that I still like Matt and that I understand the value to nonbloggers of being on the list.  I just want us to recognize that the list is our very own hero sheet.

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Okay I will admit that I am a huge American Idol fan.  Of course, I do appreciate its flaws, including the fact that it does not necessarily result in America choosing the "best" singer, and that it is often a vehicle for shameless self-promotions.  This latter is evidenced not only by the "videos" in which contestants promote products, but also by the various celebrities who just happen to be in the audience on a date close to their upcoming movie/TV show/latest CD release.  Nevertheless, I enjoy the singing and I do think the show gives some people with real talent a potentially life-altering opportunity to showcase their talent.  And of course whatever I may think of the show, it is a huge hit, which means big money.  And last night the show made an effort to "give back" some of its success, and I am among those who think that the show's efforts were commendable. 

American Idol got several corporate sponsors to agree to donate money to charities that fight hunger in the US and Africa.  On American Idol, the voting for contestants occurs through telephone calls or text messaging.  Usually the audience has two hours to vote via a toll free number, and callers can vote as many times as they like for their favorite contestant.  Last night, voting was open for four hours and American Idol sponsors agreed to make donations in connection with the calls the show received.  Idol often gets more than 30 million calls--so that agreement could potentially translate into a lot of money.  The show has been vague on how much sponsors would donate.  However, last night, I believe the host of American Idol indicated that sponsors would donate ten cents for every call received up to a maximum of 50 million calls.

To be sure, the "gives back" campaign could just be a plug for good will, and the donations being made may just be a "drop in the bucket" in the context of the amount of profit the show ultimately generates, but it is nevertheless a good deed that is worthy of recognition.  American Idol has become a phenomenon that translates into big business and millions of dollars in profits.  I appreciate the Idol using the show as a platform to raise awareness about, and money for, hunger.  Moreover, I appreciate the fact that the show got the audience to participate.  In fact, fans of the show could make individual donations to charities.  Given the many young people who watch American Idol, last night's show sent a positive message that giving back is an important part of being a success in business or otherwise.  Hence, regardless of what one may think of the motives, I applaud the show's efforts to use even a portion of its success to try and impact issues of social and economic significance.

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Steve Jobs has been the Teflon man with regard to the backdating of his Apple options, but that may change as of today. When revelations of backdating at Apple first surfaced, the company issued a statement claiming that Jobs didn't "appreciate the accounting implications" of backdating. Yesterday, after settling with the SEC, Apple's former chief financial officer, Fred Anderson, issued a statement, which may end up blowing a sizeable hole in Jobs' defense.

The gist of the problem is the Apple options in question were granted to senior Apple executives (apparently not including Jobs) in early February 2001, when Apple's shares were trading at $21, but the company used its closing stock price of $16.81 on Jan. 17 as the exercise price for the options. The general counsel of the company allegedly prepared documents showing board approval on January 17, and Apple did not record extra compensation from the options grant, causing Apple to understate its net loss by 10.8%.

According to Fred Anderson's attorney:

-- Fred was told by Steve Jobs in late January 2001 that Mr. Jobs had the agreement of the Board of Directors for the Executive Team grant on January 2, 2001. At the time Mr. Jobs provided Fred this assurance, Fred cautioned Mr. Jobs that the Executive Team grant would have to be priced based on the date of the actual Board agreement or there could be an accounting charge. He further advised Mr. Jobs that the Board would have to confirm its prior approval in a legally satisfactory method. He was told by Mr. Jobs that the Board had given its prior approval and the Board would verify it. Fred relied on these statements by Mr. Jobs and from them concluded the grant was being properly handled.

-- Fred understood that, under Apple's stock option plan and accounting rules at the time, a grant date could be moved to a later date than the date of the actual grant decision and that there would be no compensation expense as long as the stock price on the new date was higher than the price on the original date. Apple's 1998 Executive Officer Stock Option Plan provided in Section 16 that "The date of grant of an Option...shall be, for all purposes, the date on which the Administrator (in this case the Board) makes the determination granting such Option...or such later date as is determined by the Administrator ". Mr. Anderson understood that the date of grant was to be moved forward pursuant to this provision from January 2 to January 17 to avoid any appearance of impropriety that might arise from a grant awarded just prior to the stock price rise that resulted from the 2001 MacWorld exhibition and Mr. Job's keynote speech at the exhibition on January 9. He further understood that the January 17 date was selected by Mr. Jobs and Ms. Nancy Heinen, the former General Counsel, and that the stock price on January 17 was higher than the price on January 2.

-- Finally, Mr. Anderson understood that the Board of Directors, which consisted of sophisticated corporate executives of national stature, including the former Chief Financial Officer of IBM, verified the January 17 date by signing in early February 2001 a Unanimous Written Consent (UWC) with an effective date of January 17. It now appears the Board may not have given the necessary prior approval to the grants, contrary to what Mr. Anderson understood from Mr. Jobs and from the Board's signing of the UWC with an effective date of January 17.

Hmm. This has a ways to go, but Jobs could be in serious trouble. The key is whether Jobs acted with an intent to deceive Apple's investors. If Jobs knew the backdating would lead to a distortion of the company's financial statments, that looks like fraud.

UPDATE: Jeff Lipshaw dug into the SEC's complaint against Anderson and Apple General Counsel Nancy Heinen, and he concludes: "the use of the [unanimous written consent] in context with the auditors as a means of fudging the date of a grant, if as alleged, as well as the creation of minutes to a meeting that didn't occur, would bother the hell out of me as a lawyer and the certifying secretary."

UPDATE2: Statement from Apple Board Board Members Bill Campbell, Millard Drexler, Albert Gore Jr., Arthur D. Levinson, Eric Schmidt and Jerry York:

We are not going to enter into a public debate with Fred Anderson or his lawyer. Steve Jobs cooperated fully with Apple’s independent investigation and with the government’s investigation of stock option grants at Apple. The SEC investigated the matter thoroughly and its complaint speaks for itself, in terms of what it says, what it does not say, who it charges, and who it does not charge. We have complete confidence in the conclusions of Apple’s independent investigation, and in Steve’s integrity and his ability to lead Apple.

UPDATE3: Larry Ribstein has been blogging Apple more frequently than anyone. He suggests that Steve Jobs may be the protagonist in a noir plot:

All of this reminds me of the familiar noir plot in which powerful forces close in from every side on the protagonist. In my favorite version, Night and the City, Harry Fabian did his own version of backdating in the wrestling game, and ticked off some real ornery folks. He's finally chased down in a riverfront hovel where the underworld closes in.

In this case, Jobs' "non-appreciation" defense is likely to get more tenuous if people like Heinen, and possibly Anderson, start talking.

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Speaking of turnarounds, Amazon is doing it. A year ago the company's stock was in a freefall, but today brings the news that Amazon more than doubled its net income while increasing sales by 32%. The W$J headline reminded me of the days when Jeff Bezos was an internet rock star. He was Time's Person of the Year in 1999, but nowadays I hardly ever see him. Relieved of the burden of explaining e-commerce ad nauseum, he now fills part of his newfound free time investing his fortune through Bezos Expeditions, his private equity fund. In the meantime, one thing hasn't changed: Bezos still has commentators guessing about what is really going on at Amazon.

UPDATE: Groceries? I had no idea that Amazon was selling groceries. When I look at the list of Amazon's product categories, I am reminded of Bezos' expansive vision for Amazon and marveling at the fact that it seems to be coming true.

UPDATE2: Here is an excerpt from that Time Person of the Year article linked above. Transport yourself back to 1999:

And he is still losing his pants. That's maybe the one thing people still really don't understand about the e-commerce revolution. If these are such hot businesses, then why are they hemorrhaging cash? Amazon--the company everyone wants to be like--could lose nearly $350 million this year. O.K., the Net is different, but don't profits and losses matter anymore? They do. Bezos insists Amazon's oldest businesses--books, music and video--will be profitable by the end of 2000.

But Amazon's losses are also a sign of the New Economics of Internet commerce. These new rules spring from the idea that in the new global marketplace whoever has the most information wins. While it used to be sellers who had all the information, buyers are getting smarter and smarter. At sites like mysimon.com it's possible to go shopping and search not only Amazon but also the collections of two dozen other booksellers to find the best deal. And in coming years--heck, at Net speed, in coming months--it will be possible to find the cheapest price on just about anything: wines, CDs, perhaps even body parts.

...

There is, in all this, a kind of humanness that is exactly the opposite of what online shopping was supposed to be like. Amazon is not a depopulated, Logan's Run kind of store. The site allows readers to post their opinions about books, to rate products, to swap anecdotes. As you sit there reading, say, a literate and charming book review from Bangladesh, the real power of the Amazon brand comes home. It is a site that is alive with uncounted species of insight, innovation and intellect. No one predicted that electronic shopping could possibly feel this alive. If it is a sign of an e-world yet to come, a place in which technology allows all of us to shop, communicate and live closer together, then Jeff Bezos has done more than construct an online mall. He's helped build the foundation of our future.

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Krispy Kreme lost its CFO and Vice Chairman yesterday, and the stock is still in the toilet, where it has been wallowing for the past three years. (W$J) The company is trying to execute a turnaround, but it's slow going. Two weeks ago, the company held the first conference call with investors in years, and the mere occurrence of that event was heralded as a significant marker in the progress of the turnaround plan. Still, my sense is that the problems at Krispy Kreme transcend financial scandals. The more fundamental concern is that people don't really like Krispy Kreme doughnuts that much anymore. It was fun while it lasted, but we have moved on. And that whole wheat thing is not going to bring back the magic.

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In a recent post picked up by the New York Times, Frank Pasquale dissed Greg Mankiw's new paper on "The Optimal Taxation of Height" as an academic parlor game. 

Pasquale's drive-by analysis of the paper misses the point.  If we find the idea of taxing height absurd, then it puts a heavy burden on those who advocate optimal income tax analysis to defend the approach.  Optimal income tax theory suggests that we should have declining marginal tax rates.  So by attacking Mankiw's "parlor game," Pasquale, ironically, is defending declining marginal rates.  I doubt that's what Pasquale intended. 

These battles over ideal theory do have real world political relevance.  A seminar student pointed me to some state legislative proposals that would provide tax subsidies to young people as an attempt to combat brain-drain.   Should we dismiss age-based taxation as a parlor game?  In a recent paper, I use the endowment tax literature to analyze the taxation of high-ability fund managers, an issue that Congress is looking at now.  (I'm not endorsing endowment taxation; rather, our broadly-shared reluctance to taxing endowment helps explain an important element of partnership tax.)  There's a serious paper out there on gender-based taxation.  Not to mention, in the actual tax Code, various tax credits and deductions based on marital status, the number of children you have, medical conditions, and other personal attributes.  Are these all parlor games?

It's often necessary to think about ideal tax approaches in order to understand how we define the tax base and the trade-offs involved in making actual tax policy.  It's just not helpful to vaguely argue that we should tax the rich more without explaining why (and to what extent) we should tax the rich, and how we should measure wealth, income, or ability to pay in the first place. 

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Larry Ribstein, Mitt Regan, and Bruce MacEwen are on the case:

The correspondence collected here represents an effort to start a conversation. Pending legislation in the United Kingdom, based on what is known as the Clementi Report, would permit non-lawyer equity investment in law firms, subject to regulatory oversight. See http://www.dca.gov.uk/legist/legalservices.htm. In other words, UK law firms could become publicly-traded businesses. This legislation has been proposed as part of reforms heralded as improving the delivery of legal services to consumers. By contrast, such investment in law firms is forbidden by ethical rules in the United States. What will happen when the two countries with the most dominant global law firms begin to move along such different paths?

...

Appreciation of how profoundly the legal profession has changed in the past generation is useful as background. Law firms in particular have felt the brunt of a transformation in which they now must compete more fiercely than ever both for clients and for lawyers. As a result, firms increasingly have taken on the characteristics of more conventional business enterprises. They pay close attention to the financial performance of both the firm and its individual lawyers. Information about a firm’s financial condition is now widely available and can prompt dramatic reorganizations, including layoffs and reductions in compensation for lawyers.

Firms have grown substantially, with many containing over a thousand lawyers. They have opened multiple offices in the United States and abroad. Most large firms employ a cadre of non-lawyer professionals in executive and managerial positions, and vigorously market their services. An increasing number now employ general counsel to represent the firm in various matters. Most firms now are limited liability entities, and some have adopted the corporate form. In these and other respects, law firms have come more closely to resemble their corporate clients.

Some lament these changes as marking the loss of professional identity, while others applaud them as overdue measures that overturn a guild system and make the provision of legal services more efficient and responsive to clients. Until recently, however, there has been one feature of business enterprise that has been strictly off-limits for law firms: equity ownership by non-lawyers. While corporations are able to raise capital by selling shares to the public, ethics rules have forbidden lawyers from practicing in any organization in which a non-lawyer holds an ownership interest. The rationale for this has been that such ownership risks lay interference with lawyers’ professional judgment.

The discussion contained in the following pages begins with an inquiry by Bruce MacEwen into whether current United States ethical rules would permit law firms to issue a financial instrument whose value is tied to the financial performance of the form. The rule potentially most directly applicable is American Bar Association Model Rule 5.4, which provides that a lawyer "shall not practice with or in the form of a professional corporation or association authorized to practice law for a profit if . . . a nonlawyer owns any interest therein." Mr. MacEwen poses several questions. Could the financial instrument he describes be issued to lawyers in a firm? To non-lawyers? Could it be sold to persons outside the firm and be publicly traded? Would it represent an interest in the firm – thus forbidden by Rule 5.4 – or an interest only in a derivative issued by the firm?

If the discussion began and ended with MacEwen's derivative security, it would be rather uninteresting, but Larry correctly broadens the scope of the inquiry. The issue is not whether clever lawyers can beat the current ethical rules, but rather whether the current ethical rules are outmoded. In short, should we allow "lawyers to practice law in publicly-owned firms, free from the ethical constraints on both ownership and non-competes." MacEwan agrees: "In for a dime, in for a dollar."

Good stuff.

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The Mormons. We are scary.

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The Yale Law Journal has the Pocket Part, Harvard Law Review has The Forum, Michigan Law Review has First Impressions, Northwestern University Law Review has Colloquy, Texas Law Review has See Also, Virginia Law Review has In Brief, and University of Pennsylvania Law Review has PENNumbra. What is happening here?

When the Yale Law Journal introduced the Pocket Part, the editors described the site as "provid[ing] a forum for discussion and up-to-date additional information on articles." Nice idea. Not revolutionary, but nice. Harvard followed suit with The Forum, which consists of Responses (capital "R") to Articles (capital "A") published in the Harvard Law Review. Texas also recently embraced this model.

While HLR and Texas have remained true to that focused mission, the editors of the Yale Pocket Part have strayed, turning Pocket Part into an alternate publication outlet, with essays on a wide variety of issues unrelated to the content of the Yale Law Journal. For example, U.S. District Court Judge Lee Rosenthal (Hi, Lee!) wrote a freestanding series on electronic discovery (start here), and the Pocket Part sometimes has a series of essays on recent judicial decisions or a bit of navel gazing. Presently the site contains a Call for Papers on cyber bullying.

Other online journals also are combining responses to articles in the printed journal with freestanding content. Penn established PENNumbra to serve as a "link between legal academia and the 'blogosphere.'" The site features "brief scholarly responses to ... articles, and online debates on topics of current interest."

The notion that these online journals fill a gap between traditional law reviews and legal blogs is catching on. When the Virginia Law Review announced the creation of In Brief earlier this year, the press release stated:

Attempting to balance the speed with which a blog can disseminate information and the academic weight that a traditional article carries, [Virginia Law Review's Technology Development Editor Chris Yeung] says that In Brief is designed to publish "more polished ideas at a quicker speed." Moreover, [Jim Zucker, Virginia Law Review's Editor-in-Chief] admits that publications like Virginia Law Review "can't compete with blogs" while also maintaining the degree of quality for which the legal community values them. Rather, he contends that a more balanced approach is the wiser course.

Northwestern University Law Review took a slightly different path, touting Colloquy as the "first scholarly weblog to be operated by a major law review." According to the editors this "new format will allow scholars to publish their thoughts within days of an emerging legal development." As a blog, it is fairly low on content, featuring only a few posts per month. Some of the posts are freestanding essays, others are part of an exchange, and others are responses to articles in the law review. (My initial reaction is the that blog format works less well for this sort of thing than the other formats, which are organized more coherently by subject matter rather than by date.)

The Michigan Law Review seems to have gone further than any other journal in creating an entirely separate product. The website for the online journal states:

First Impressions, an online companion to the Review, features op-ed length articles by academics and practitioners in order to fill the gap between the blogosphere and the traditional law review article. This extension of our printed pages aims to provide a forum for quicker dissemination of the legal community's first impressions of recent changes in the law.

Thus far, the Michigan journal consists of a series of online symposia that are unrelated to the content of the printed journal.

Over the years, I have encountered many professors who have expressed the desire to produce short-form legal scholarship. An essay, perhaps, or even something more modest. Such scholarship could be inspired by a longer piece in a law review or by a recent judicial opinion, statute, or regulation. Traditional law reviews have not been very hospitable to such work. In my view, legal blogs have succeeded in part because the academy has a substantial number of people who are willing to produce short-form legal scholarship and the demand for such work is (relatively) large.

Enter the "online companions" to traditional law reviews. How do they add value? In my view, the primary value added by these new publications is not their timeliness or their supposed "polish," but that they (1) link thoughtful responses to long-form legal scholarship, and (2) act as a gathering place for a variety of pieces of short-form legal scholarship on the same topic (online symposia). In short, the law reviews have an organizational advantage over individual bloggers, who organize via cross-linking, which is often haphazard.

Where is all of this headed? Here is an interesting tidbit from the Virginia press release: "counterparts at the nations' other leading law reviews are almost uniformly planning the near-term launch of an online companion to their print journals."

So we should expect more offerings in online publishing from student-edited law reviews. Soon. I suspect that someone will create an index of online publications, further formalizing these outlets. While the new online journals will not put legal bloggers out of business, many more law professors will be able to satisfy the occasional impulse to produce short-form legal scholarship without turning to blogging. As a result, I expect the development of legal blogs to plateau. (Actually, that may be happening already.)

UPDATE: Christine pointed me to the Concurring Opinions Law Review Forum, which reminds me of another aspect of this issue. In announcing the project, Dan Solove observed, "A wide readership for a website depends upon having daily content. Law review forums produce content sporadically throughout the year at intervals that are not regular enough to attract a significant readership." Exactly right. While law reviews have an organizational advantage over individual bloggers, blogs have the advantage of creating communities of readers.

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Larry Ribstein is slumming at the Harvard Corporate Governance Blog, where he examines the recently adopted North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act. Larry describes the default rules of the Act as a "set of provisions that looks like a shareholder rights advocate's wish list," but he observes that "if corporations really want these provisions, they don't need to go to North Dakota." Given the relative paucity of such corporations on the modern landscape, Larry concludes that "the ND experiment is less interesting than it may seem."

I spoiled the punchline, but you really should read the whole post.

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Would it be disrespectful to play word association with Yeltsin upon hearing news of his death?

My initial thoughts were not about his quirky personality or his battle with alcohol, but about his political legacy. How about "hope unrealized"?

Notice the contradictions in the NYT story about his life and times: "the country's democratic father and a reviled figure"; "giant, if flawed, legacy"; "a democrat [who] often ruled in the manner of a czar"; "heroism and weakness"; etc.

More detail:

Mr. Yeltsin may well be remembered less as a builder of institutions than as a destroyer of them. He dismantled the Soviet Union and the Communist Party, put an end to the centralized Soviet economy and crushed the putsch that threatened to return the country to the old ways.

But he could only begin the transition to a democratic, capitalist Russia based on the rule of law. The system he put in place, after fending off both legislative and military challenges, remains fragile, often incoherent and based on personality.

Nevertheless, Mr. Yeltsin brought about fundamental economic change: a market economy, however distorted and corrupt; an emerging younger class of business executives; and, in the last years of his presidency, a gradual reduction in crime.

Politically, too, his reforms had impact. The legislature began to shape politics, the news media kept most of their newly acquired freedoms, and political rivals competed openly in elections.

In his lifetime, the worst that many in Russia and the West had feared — a Communist revival or new fascism built on chaos — never materialized, although press freedoms have been curtailed under Mr. Putin and fears about the fragility of democracy in Russia have been stirred.

Ok, another attempt at word association: "complicated."

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My earliest memories are filled with snippets of television reports from Vietnam -- and more fulsome memories of a naval-officer father who fought in that war -- but it wasn't until I read The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam that I was able to make some sense of the myriad personalities, places, and events that were mentioned so often during those times.

I read a couple other books by Halberstam -- The Reckoning and Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made -- and started several others, but Halberstam seemed inextricably connected to Vietnam. His work there was important and insightful and passionate. I never felt those qualities in his other books, which were painstakingly researched, but dull by comparison to The Best and the Brightest.

David Halberstam died today in an automobile accident. He was 73 years old. His book on the Korean War, The Coldest Winter, is due out this fall, and I may take a crack at that. His wife, Jean Halberstam, is quoted as saying, "I think the work he was proudest of was his trilogy on war," which includes the two war books already mentioned and War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals. (NYT) 

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Over the weekend, I also noticed Jeff Lipshaw's post on lawyers and knitting.  I thought I would take that idea to jump off the deep end into what could be a hornet's nest.  What do readers think of law professors knitting during faculty meetings, AALS meetings, etc?

I know quite a few people who knit, including one Glom blogger-in-law, so I want all points of view here.  (I know how to knit, but I have not ridden the resurgence in knitting's popularity.)  My first take when seeing this phenomenon was fairly negative, even though one of my friends that I respect very much was the first person I can remember seeing knitting at an academic conference.  She told me that it actually made her pay more attention, and that she retained more of the talk than if she was empty-handed.  I am very fidgety, and I think knitting might be a good, mindless activity for me during workshops and meetings to keep my hands busy.  However, I have only seen women knitting in public, not men, and so I'm torn.  I remember sitting at a AALS session and seeing a woman needlepointing.  I said something to my neighbor like "A women's work is never done.  We must bring our handiwork to the AALS meeting."  Am I just worried about the knitting gender line?

A female law professor friend who does not knit remarked that knitting during a meeting or workshop is not any ruder (from the speaker's perspective) than tapping on a computer during such.  And, while knitting may occupy the hands but leave the attention mostly free, surfing the Internet, checking email, or working on one's own stuff generally does not.  Thoughts?

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Barbara Black linked to this WSJ article over the weekend that chronicles Ben Glisan's journey through the federal prison system.  I think many of us downplay in our minds how horrible federal prisons, especially minimum security "camps" are, possibly to insulate ourselves from the lengthy sentences that are meted out every day.  However, after seeing my husband's clients (thankfully few of them) spend time in even the best camps, I certainly do not wish the experience on anyone.  At every turn, an inmate is reminded that he (or she) is not human, is not an individual, and has no rights at all.  The entire process, from beginning to end, is purposefully dehumanizing.

Glisan's account is a textbook account.  Although he seemed to be a perfect candidate for a minimum-security camp, prison officials chose to put him in a higher security prison across the highway from the camp he had requested.  Glisan only learned that his request was denied when officials turned into the prison instead of the camp.  Then he went to solitary confinement because his paperwork had not yet arrived.  No one's paperwork ever arrives when they do, and this trip through solitary is routine and meant to break down all who enter.  When he finally did get a transfer almost two years later to a camp in Beaumont, he was transferred via a prison bus that went from Bastrop, TX to Oklahoma before taking him to Beaumont.  (For those unfamiliar with Texas geography, this would be similar to traveling from Paris to Madrid via Berlin.)

Glisan's roomies were not accountants and tax cheats; they were drug lords and mobsters.  Before testifying against Enron, he had to secure the blessing of the head of the white prison gang there or fear retaliation for being a snitch.  I know there are many readers who think that all criminals, particularly white-collar criminals, deserve what they get, but I can't believe that living in fear for one's physical safety on a daily basis for three years is getting off easy.

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From WaPo:

House Democrats, aiming to seize taxes from Republicans as a political issue, have come up with a plan to shift the burden of the hated alternative minimum tax onto the shoulders of the nation's richest households.

The proposal, still in its preliminary stages, would attempt to restore the original purpose of the parallel tax structure, which was created in 1969 to nab 155 super-rich tax filers who were using loopholes and deductions to wipe out their tax bills.

Yes!

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