August 16, 2010 | 8:07 pm

Ninth Circuit panel issues stay on gay marriage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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That was quick.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit has issued a stay pending appeal in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the Prop. 8 case. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker had deemed unconstitutional the voter-approved measure banning same-sex marriage and then said that gays would be allowed to marry while the case was appealed.

Not now, according to the appellate panel’s order, via Above the Law:

Appellants’ motion for a stay of the district court’s order of August 4, 2010 pending appeal is GRANTED. The court sua sponte orders that this appeal be expedited pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 2. The provisions of Ninth Circuit Rule 31-2.2(a) (pertaining to grants of time extensions) shall not apply to this appeal. This appeal shall be calendared during the week of December 6, 2010, at The James R. Browning Courthouse in San Francisco, California.

The previously established briefing schedule is vacated. The opening brief is now due September 17, 2010. The answering brief is due October 18, 2010. The reply brief is due November 1, 2010. In addition to any issues appellants wish to raise on appeal, appellants are directed to include in their opening brief a discussion of why this appeal should not be dismissed for lack of Article III standing. See Arizonans For Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 66 (1997).

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Here’s a link to the panel’s order.

August 16, 2010 | 1:13 pm

Jeffrey Ross on Hasselhoff: ‘Finally, a Jew gets to roast a German’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I was gone last night, so you know I DVRed the “Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff.” Ever since I spotted him at church one Sunday, I’ve felt a special bond to Mitch. (This was before that cheeseburger video.) I’m watching the roast now, and though it’s no Bob Saget roast, it’s pretty funny. Obviously, totally profane. But funny.

Jeffrey Ross, one of a few Jews on the dais to roast the German hero, wasn’t the only one to make a Holocaust-related joke. His was just the most jarring. Looking like Hoff with a curly mop and nothing but an open leather jacket and black spankies, Ross said, speaking to the guest of honor:

Finally, a Jew gets to roast a German. Heil Hasselhoff!

The only difference between Hasselhoff and Hitler? At least Hitler knew when his career was over.

Why do the Germans love you so much, huh? Maybe it’s because you fill the entertainment void left by Anne Frank.

Ah ... Too soon?

Womp womp.

Maybe not surprisingly, this clip didn’t make it onto Comedy Central’s online archive of videos from the roast. Check those out here.

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August 16, 2010 | 11:31 am

Alleged Craiglist killer is dead

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I was wondering why I was seeing a spike in traffic for an old post about the alleged Craigslist killer, asking “Is Phillip Markoff Jewish?” Now I know: Markoff is dead. Suicide appears to be the cause.

From CNN.com:

The cause of death is under investigation, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis and Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement.

“Markoff was alone in his cell and all evidence collected thus far indicates that he took his own life,” the statement said. “Nonetheless, as with all such cases, a comprehensive investigation will be conducted to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding his death.”

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August 16, 2010 | 10:44 am

Iranian withdraws from finals match against Israeli at IOC Youth Games

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

What happens when an Israeli and an Iranian both make the taekwondo finals at the International Olympic Committee’s Youth Games? Positively nothing. That’s because Mohammad Soleimani of Iran didn’t show up.

Officially, he withdrew because of an aggravated old injury. But the IOC is looking into the credibility of that claim. And 3 Wire Sports thinks it should be suspicious:

When, in 2004, at the Athens Olympics, Iranian judo competitor Arash Miresmaeli, a two-time world champ, refused to take to the mat for a first-round match against Ehud Vaks of Israel, Iranian officials later awarding Miresmaeli $120,000 — the going rate there for a gold medal — for what was called a “great act of self-sacrifice.”

(skip)

When, if Soleimani had gone on to fight, there was of course the risk he might lose — in which case he would suffer the indignity not only of loss but of standing on the podium while the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, rang out.

So, as it turned out, the anthem sounded, with Haimovitz on the top of the podium. To his left, the American and Argentinian shared the third-place stand. The second-place stand — it was empty.

This story only makes me appreciate the handshake last season between Omri Casspi and Hamed Haddadi. But here’s what I don’t understand: If Iranians don’t like, or even hate, Israelis, why would they withdraw from a fight?

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August 13, 2010 | 6:55 pm

Dr. Laura’s crazy n-bomb outburst

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m not really a talk radio guy—all NPR for me—so it’s no surprise I wasn’t listening to Dr. Laura when she flew off the deep end this week.

Listen for yourself. One is too many, but that’s a lot of n-bombs. It began with a question from a black caller who was upset with her white husband for tolerating racist remarks. After a break, Dr. Laura went wild:

ALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?
DR. LAURA: It depends how it’s said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it’s ok.
CALLER: But you’re not black, they’re not black, my husband is white.
DR. LAURA: Oh, I see, so a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can’t do much about that.
CALLER: I can’t believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the n***** word, and I hope everybody heard it.
DR. LAURA: I didn’t spew out the n***** word!
CALLER: You said “n*****, n*****, n*****” and I hope everybody heard it.
DR. LAURA: Yes they did, and I’ll say it again: n*****, n*****, n***** is what you hear on HBO.

Reminds me of that scene from “Meet the Parents”—Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, b-bomb, bomb, b-b-bomb, b-da-bomb, bomb, bomb.

Of course, Dr. Laura has apologized. But what I don’t understand is what was her beef to start. Notice that it doesn’t seem to bother her that this word is derogatory; she doesn’t make the argument that many black people do that this is a dirty word that reinforces Jim Crow notions. She’s just mad because it’s a “double standard.”

Absurd. Pretty safe to say she wouldn’t find this clip very funny.

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August 13, 2010 | 3:41 pm

Prop. 8 proponents move to block gay marriage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

After Judge Vaughn Walker followed up his deeming Prop. 8 unconstitutional with a lift on the gay marriage ban, this was coming. Proponents of the voter-passed measure banning gay marriage filed an emergency motion today with the 9th Circuit to overrule Walker and block gay marriage:

Attorneys for ProtectMarriage.com, the campaign that sponsored the 2008 anti-gay marriage measure, said in a 73-page appeal that Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker ignored the law and tradition by concluding that gays should be entitled to marry.

“The district court simply ignored virtually everything—judicial authority, the works of eminent scholars past and present in all relevant academic fields, extensive documentary and historical evidence, and even common sense—opposed to its conclusions,” the ProtectMarriage lawyers wrote.

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August 12, 2010 | 11:57 pm

Christian convert released from state custody; Muslim parents still angry

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rifqa Bary is 18.

That means the Christian convert who became a ward of Ohio because of fear that her Muslim family would abuse her because of her choice of faith is out on her own. Here’s what the AP had to say:

Bary, who had argued that she feared harm from her parents because of her religious conversion, planned to celebrate her birthday privately with friends, her attorneys said.

“She looks forward to preaching the word to all the nations — and those are her words,” said Angela Lloyd, one of her attorneys.

(skip)

“She has views and she has beliefs, and the sooner the parents come to understand and recognize that, the sooner there could be down the road some reconciliation,” Kort Gatterdam, another Bary attorney, said in his first public comments after a gag order dissolved with Bary’s birthday.

As you can imagine, Bary’s parents aren’t too found of her attorneys.

Her case became a cause celebre when it erupted last year. Lots of others have weighed in. Check out Mollie’s piece from last September and, more recently, Howard Friedman of Religion Clause.

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August 11, 2010 | 11:02 pm

Strippers hold wet t-shirt contest in church parking lot

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

How could I have missed this story? Oh yeah: OCI. Too bad. This story really has everything: churchgoers, strippers, Ohio.

Here we go:

Strip-club owner Tommy George rolled up to the church in his grabber-orange Dodge Challenger, drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 in the morning and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled himself.

Pastor Bill Dunfee stepped out of a tan Nissan Murano, clutching a Bible in one hand and his sermon in the other, a touch of spray holding his perfectly coiffed ‘do in place.

Inside the New Beginnings Ministries church, Dunfee’s worshippers wore polyester and pearls.

Outside, George’s strippers wore bikinis and belly rings.

Both men agree it is classic sinners vs. saints. But George says it is up to America to decide which is which and who is who.

Dunfee says God already has chosen.

“Tom George is a parasite, a man without judgment,” Dunfee said. “The word of Jesus Christ says you cannot share territory with the devil.”

The battle that has heretofore played out in the parking lot of George’s strip club - the Foxhole, a run-down, garage-like building at a Coshocton County crossroads called Newcastle - has shifted 7 miles east to Church Street.

Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George’s joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers’ license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.

Ah, so the strippers protesting in the church parking lot is a little tit for tat.

This isn’t so much sinners vs. saints, at least not from the perspective of churchgoers, as it is good vs. evil. For one, everyone sins and none of these folks have been beatified. Not sure why the strip club owner thinks the American public has a dog in this fight. But an interesting story, nonetheless, and the kind that gets news editors salivating at the prospect of filling newspace with a quirky story that titillates while providing a little window into an odd suburban squabble.

Lots of somewhat cliche, and misused religious imagery sprinkled throughout detailed that paint a pretty vivid picture:

Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.

It’s just that they’ve come wearing see-through shorts and toting Super Soakers.

In many ways, what Dunfee and his congregation have done reminds me of the work of XXXChurch and those spreading the gospel at porn conventions. I wrote a lot about that in 2007 after following Craig Gross for three very exhausting days at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, which I reflected on the following year as pornstar ministries seemed to be growing:

There is no question that patrons and performers at the porn convention are open to Veitch and XXXChurch and the handful of other ministries. But after watching these interactions, I wasn’t sure how effective they were. A lot of people listened, few people turned down the “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” Bibles handed out by XXXChurch, but they seemed to think it was more kitsch than Gospel.

Craig Gross, who runs XXXChurch, told me that people ask him all the time whether he feels like he is making a difference. And at one point he wasn’t so sure. In his book “The Dirty Little Secret,” he writes about a guy who he thought he had helped free from the bondage of porn—only to find the guy later fly off the deep end.

Some Christians are cynical of Gross and his colleagues, claiming they’re a bunch of perverts who want an excuse to cavort with unnaturally endowed women. In a documentary, “Missionary Positions,” one of the guys from XXXChurch (I can’t remember who) gets smacked by a more fire-and-brimstone preacher who thinks Gross is doing the work of the devil.

I don’t buy this. Certainly there are people who want out of the adult business. People like Keri Humble. And knowing that, these ministries just want to be there. Even if there is there.

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August 11, 2010 | 8:23 pm

Those law school summertime blues

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

As I mentioned Friday, last week concluded my summer at Bet Tzedek. This week I am spending each weekday camped out at the Hotel Angeleno, where On-Campus Interviews are being held with a big law firms (oddly off campus). OCI is an interesting time—stressful, indeed, but I rather enjoy the barrage of 20-minute interviews. I only wish the conversations could last longer, and that a little less rode on them.

Finding work as a lawyer in 2010 is not as tough as being a journalist now, or even five years ago, but the economic downturn certainly reversed the fortunes of the meaty middle of law students at top schools who for a few years there were basically guaranteed a job at a big law firm. With it came big money, long hours and invaluable legal experience. By comparison, I’m interviewing with firms this week who are considering somewhere between 50 and 100 additional candidates for two or three summer spots. Summer spots that turn into first jobs when law school ends.

None of this is news to me. In 2007, the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article on the waning value of just having any J.D. That article focused on both the high numbers of attorneys and the over-saturation of the legal education market. Still, the top schools were, and largely remain, strong indicators of a promising legal career. You just might need a little longer to take off.

Employment prospects remain dim, though not as ugly as they were last year. (Making the NBA is still more of a long shot.) There are indications the tide is turning. For now, what we know is that the legal profession is rebounding—but how quickly?

Writing earlier this summer in The Jewish Journal, Idan Ivri, a fellow double Bruin licensed to practice in California, told some very familiar tales.

The gist of his article: Three 6 Mafia was right. Ivri writes:

The Web site Law Shucks determined that “2009 will go down as the worst year ever for law-firm layoffs,” based on its archive of press releases, leaked e-mails and news reports. The data show that 4,633 lawyers were let go last year from the group of high-powered, high-paying national firms loosely known as “Big Law.” And those numbers don’t even include lawyers whose firms dissolved completely, who were the victims of “stealth layoffs” masquerading as firings, or who were laid off by smaller firms. In other words, Law Shucks concluded that, in 2009, “More people were laid off by more firms than had been reported for all previous years combined.”

“Whenever you see layoffs like that, people are going to get very worried about their job future,” said Scott Schaefer, a professor of finance at the University of Utah. Schaefer and Stanford professor Paul Oyer published an academic study in March titled “What Drives Turnover and Layoffs at Large Law Firms?” based in part on the Law Shucks numbers. “Because of [the layoffs], this year’s law grads are facing a very difficult job market,” Schaefer said. “There are a lot of last year’s class, the year before, and even the year before that who are now competing with this year’s graduates.”

Much of that competition is rooted in the pre-recession Big Law salaries of 2007-2008, which peaked at $160,000 per year for beginning attorneys. The dream of earning that salary in one’s 20s or early 30s — and paying off student loans — was enough for many young lawyers to bear the 80-plus-hour weeks and the routine night and weekend work. Now, though, salaries anywhere near that range are exceedingly rare, and many students will simply settle for a job.

Before the recession, law students looking to earn the top salaries had to follow a straight and narrow but somewhat navigable road: The first step was to earn top grades at a good school in the first year. Next, students had to gain some legal experience — through public service or at a firm — during the first summer that, in combination with those excellent grades, would wow Big Law interviewers the following fall. Ideally, that would lead to a lucrative “summer associate” job at a firm the following year. Finally, in the fall of the third year, students would tensely wait for firms to extend offers of full-time employment to their best summer associates.

But today, even the most impressive law students with fantastic grades and advanced degrees are routinely eliminated every step of the way, making it ferociously difficult to stay on the path to Big Law.

Why was this a Jewish story? Well ...—insert Jewish lawyer joke here. or just watch this video via Heeb, embedded after the jump.

Anyway, for all my friends participating in OCI now and over the coming weeks across the country, good luck and godspeed. Just save a job for me. Preferably not at the firm mentioned in the following video clip. I don’t think I’m, uh, qualified for that job.

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August 10, 2010 | 4:33 pm

Christopher Hitchens on dying

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In the above video, Christopher Hitchens, who has an aggressive form of esophogeal cancer, talks very frankly with Jeffrey Goldberg about the fact that he is dying. “Everybody is. But the process has accelerated on me. I’m looking for ways to do it more like you.”

Last month, news that Hitchens, an excellent journalist and a leading voice of American atheists, canceled his book tour because of illness prompted a debate over deathbed conversion. In the conversation with Goldberg, Hitchens says he appreciates those who are praying for him to recover, but not those who are only praying for him to repent and be saved.

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August 10, 2010 | 10:26 am

Parents lose custody of Adolf Hitler; reporter loses breakfast

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You might remember the story from 2008 about little Adolf Hitler, whose parents rose a stink when a supermarket refused to put Adolf’s full name on his birthday cake. The Campbell parents later lost custody of their three children: Adolf Hitler, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie.

Now a New Jersey appellate court has ruled the parents won’t be getting their kids back:

The appeals court ruled Thursday to “reverse” the previous court decision, saying that social workers had “proved the need for protective services for these children within the meaning of abuse or neglect.”

The court said that Heath Campbell, 37, has never held a job because of medical and psychological disabilities, and cannot read. Deborah Campbell, 27, also had mental and physical problems.

Social workers were sent to investigate in December 2008 following reports “that the children were being strapped and confined for unusual amounts of time within the home in child booster seats and that domestic violence occurred in the home,” the court said.

Frankly, I was more fascinated by the headlines this story has received than the story itself. And I wasn’t going to blog about it—until I saw this photo at Above the Law.

Cute? Creepy? Without a doubt scarier than “The Last Exorcism?” Yes.

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August 9, 2010 | 11:45 am

Anti-Islam NIMBYs going nationwide?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

All this talk lately about mosques opening and closing and being fought by the locals. Here’s a piece from Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times about the battles being waged in the ‘burbs and the big city:

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.

In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.

In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.

At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.

These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.

Disagree. These local skirmishes make clear that there are lots of people who don’t want Islam in their community because they believe Islam is inherently violent and intolerant and that it’s only a matter of time before the moderate Muslims figure this out. But hasn’t that been the case for a few years now?

It’s also a stretch to that there “is now widespread debate.” About the Ground Zero Mosque—yes. But not about mosques in any random community. Though even those plans are being fought, it’s not based on a widespread debate but on old-fashioned religious NIMBYism.

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