Reading his opinion in a mortgage-settlement kickback case, Freeman v. Quicken Loans, Justice Scalia went to Aesop's fables to illustrate a point.
"Aesop's fable would be just as wryly humorous if the lion's claim to the entirety of the kill he hunted in partnership with less ferocious animals had been translated into English as the "lion's portion" instead of the lion's share," he wrote.
After five days on the witness stand Brian McNamee was looking pretty bad, at one point loosening his tie and pulling his collar away from his neck. The picture of defeat.
McNamee will return to face more questioning on Monday, but now the judge has imposed a time limit on witnesses so it should be his last day on the stand.
AP story here.
Roger Clemens lawyer, Rusty Hardin, hammered and chipped away at Brian McNamee on the fourth day of his testimony, nineteen hours so far. His exhaustive scattershot examination does seem to be working. McNamee has admitted to minimizing the truth and outright lying to investigators.
Below are a couple more sketches from today's testimony.
Hardin put up a photo of Roger and Debbie Clemens that appeared in the 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
On the screen is the cover of McNamee's unpublished book, "Death, Taxes and Mac"
AP story here.
Yesterday I was at the ready, pencil in hand, to catch that dramatic moment when Brian McNamee would point out the defendant, Roger Clemens, to the jury, but it never happened. Today, though, just as I was telling my colleague, fellow sketch artist Bill Hennessy, that we weren't going to get the money shot...it happened.
We also got to see a photo of the Yankee Stadium jacuzzi. One of many locations were McNamee said he injected Clemens with HGH.
Finally, with only a half hour left in the day, the defense began its cross-examination. Rusty Hardin questioned McNamee about a tie he wore when he testified before the grand jury. The tie had an advertisement on it promoting a friend's business.
Not sure what the point was except McNamee had the bad taste to take advantage of a media event.
McNamee of course said he chose that particular tie because his other tie was wrinkled.
AP story here.
Roger Clemens' chief accuser, trainer Brian McNamee, took the stand today and described the time he began injecting Clemens with anabolic steroids in 1998.
He said Clemens first approached him with a bottle of pills and some glass ampoules. "I told him they were no good, that they were toxic. I said get rid of them".
A few days later, according to McNamee, Clemens had him come to his hotel suite. "When I got there Roger had the needle, gauze, and alcohol all set up in his bathroom on a towel".
"He asked me if I could help him with a booty shot", said McNamee.
AP story here.
Roger Clemens' friend and former teammate, Andy Pettitte took the stand Tuesday and as expected told the jury about a conversation during which Clemens admitted to using Human Growth Hormone.
During cross-examination defense attorney Michael Attanasio got Pettitte to agree that the discussion about HGH was "passing" and "casual", and that it was possible that he may have - as Clemens once put it - "misremembered."
On Wednesday it got worse. Attanasio asked Pettitte if it would be fair to say there was a 50-50 chance he had misunderstood Clemens. Pettitte replied, "I'd say that's fair."
When the defense asked Judge Walton to strike Andy Pettitte's testimony about the HGH conversation because it is "insufficiently definitive" the judge took the opportunity to chide prosecutor Steven Durham.
"His testimony now before the jury is, 'I don't know,' " Walton told Durham. "I thought that what we would hear is, 'Mr. Pettitte, currently, what is your memory of what Mr. Clemens told you back in 1999?' "
"I was waiting for you to ask, and you didn't ask that."
The week ended with testimony by FDA agent Jeff Novitsky who established where trainer Brian McNamee got the HGH that he claims he injected Clemens with, and identified syringes, needles and cotton balls bearing Roger Clemens' DNA given to him by McNamee. Novitsky was a very credible witness, and seemed to connect with jurors looking straight at them as he spoke.
Next week McNamee testifies.
NY Post's Ken Davidoff's story here.
Things just kept getting better for Arizona governor Jan Brewer, in the right foreground above, and the state's mean-spirited anti-immigration law, SB 1070, especially when the Chief Justice cut off Solicitor General Verrilli before he could even begin his argument saying, “No part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling, does it?" Which, of course, is the elephant in the room.
When Verrilli later in his argument sought to illustrate the harrasment of legal Latinos by citing population percentages Scalia interjected, "Sounds like racial profiling to me".
The lawyer for Arizona, Paul Clement, on the other hand faced moderate questions from the Justices as he sought to soften the edges of a harsh law.
Dahlia Lithwick's story here.
....You see my stumbling around.....that's not an act." Rusty Hardin told jurors as he wrapped up an opening statement. The folksy Texan appealled to the jurors sense of outrage that the government would prosecute Roger Clemens simply because he insisted on his innocence.
Read about it here.
Near the end of a day taken up mainly by lawyers bickering over details the jury in the Roger Clemens trial finally got to hear an opening statement by the government. The defense's opening, should they decide to give one at this stage - and everyone expects they will, won't happen until tomorrow.
AP story here.
In a playful break of decorum a lawyer at respondent's table stuck the quill pen that is traditionally given to counsel behind his ear. It should be noted that this occured a half-hour before the Justices would take the bench, and spectators had just begun to be seated.
The case being argued was Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter.
Roger Clemens stands before the pool of prospective jurors on the first day of his retrial on charges of lying to Congress about his use of performance enhancing drugs. His lawyer, Rusty Hardin is seated in the foreground.
Read the Tweets here.
Not much happened in the courtroom during the twenty minute hearing. Judge Cleland later met with the lawyers in chambers to discuss scheduling. The shorter the hearing the harder rhe drawing.
You can read about it here.
I'm pretty much cross-eyed after three days of sketching the Supreme Court's health care argument marathon, so I'll just post today's drawings with brief captions.
Paul Clement, shown above, begins his argument on severability.
Justice Scalia needles Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Smiley Kneedler.
Justice Breyer brandishes portions of the Affordable Care Act.
Clement makes his argument on Medicaid Expansion.
Solicitor General Donald Verrilli had a better day today, but too late?
Lyle Denniston's recap of the arguments on severability is here.
And Lyle's recap of the Medicaid arguments is here.
It was hard going for Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, pictured above and below, as a majority of the Justices expressed skepticism about about the individual mandate provision of the new health care law.
Former Solicitior General Paul Clement, now representing the challengers to the Affordable Care Act, appeared to win today's round.
Round three tomorrow.
Mike Sacks has it covered here.
The first issue before the Court was the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 which says that you can't challenge a tax until it's been collected. Under the new Affordable Care Act if you don't have health insurance you pay a penalty, and because that penalty is assessed depending upon your income and is collected by the IRS it could be seen as a tax. And since that tax has yet to be collected an appeal is premature, a position neither side is claiming and so the Court appointed Washington lawyer Robert A. Long, pictured below, to play devil's advocate, or more properly amicus curiae.
Lyle Denniston's take on today's arguments here.
One of the nation's greatest civil rights attorneys NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John Payton passed away yesterday. He is shown here arguing before the Supreme Court in Gratz v. Bollinger, April 1, 2003.
A couple of sketches from today at the Supreme Court :
The Court heard arguments in two cases where juveniles were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Both prisoners were very ably represented by Bryan Stevenson, pictured above.
The Court also announced opinions in four cases. Pictured below, clockwise from the bottom right, are Justice Sotomayor, Justice Breyer, Justice Kennedy and Justice Ginsburg reading her dissent in Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland.
A work in progress: recreation of two cases arising from sit-in protests at a segregated lunch counter and a restaurant in Columbia, SC in the early sixties. On the bench, left to right, are Justices Byron White, William Brennan, Tom C. Clark, Hugo Black, Chief Justice Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, John M. Harlan, Potter Stewart and Arthur Goldberg. At the lectern is Constance Baker Motley, and behind her, L-R, are Jack Greenberg, Matthew J. Perry and, peeking out the corner, Ralph S. Spritzer. The lawyer for the City of Columbia, David W. Robinson, is seated to the left of the lectern.
Harvard and Stanford constitutional expert Kathleen Sullivan made a brilliant argument in the Supreme Court today and ceded no quarter. When asked by Justice Breyer if Blackbeard would have been protected by incorporating Pirates, Inc., she replied, "yes, the corporation would not be liable."
Stanford Law professor Jeffrey Fisher had a harder time of it - and the harder argument - trying to persuade a skeptical Court that the word "individuals" in the Torture Victim Protection Act could refer to organizations, and not just human beings.
You can read Lyle Denniston's analysis here.
A lively argument was heard at the Supreme Court Wednesday on the constitutionality of the "Stolen Valor Act" which makes it a crime to lie about receiving military decorations.
Robert Barnes has the story here.
