Last December saw the biggest Ponzi scheme in history come to light, orchestrated by one Bernard Madoff.  Since then Law.com has maintained a Madoff Watch page, keeping up to date with the case. Yesterday, Madoff was finally sentenced, receiving the maximum 150 years in prison, the longest sentence ever given for a white collar crime.  With billions of dollars lost (final numbers still aren’t available), some feel that 150 years, though his life expectance is only another dozen years, is a symbolic gesture of justice.  For more look at Law.com (which includes links to other interesting documents), the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal.

In an update to our post yesterday, the local paper, the Herald-Times, has the thoughts of our own Prof. Bradley on the subject.  He feels that the decision was a reasonable compromise.  Take a look!

In 2003 thirteen year old Savana Redding was strip searched by officials are her Middle School looking for pain killers.  Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the search was illegal, violating Redding’s Forth Amendment rights.  School officials, however, are still entitled to qualified immunity for the search, as the standard was unclear at the time. This may be the final opinion of Justice Souter’s career, as he penned the majority decision.  The court found that the search was illegal 8-1, and for qualified immunity 7-2.  For more, you can read the stories on Law.com or ABC News, or read the decision itself.

Bloomington is the home of a blog devoted to chocolate-the Chocolate Cult.  The Cult has been nominated for blogger’s choice awards for humor, food, and religion. Every Saturday the Chocolate Priestess writes a review of a new kind of chocolate. She’s got a rather involved tasting process, which means that you could never have to eat sub-par chocolate again.  In between Saturdays she has entries on anything and everything chocolate.  Monday, for example, was apparently National Chocolate Éclair Day.  At the moment the blog is even running a competition to find another reviewer-a Chocolate Coconut Acolyte.  Go take a look!  Chocolate is one of the many things that can help you survive law school.

The descendants of famed Apache warrior Geronimo have filed a suit against the federal government to obtain his remains.  The suit mentions not only President Obama and other highly placed government officials, but also Yale University and the Skull and Bones society.  After many years of U.S. and Mexican expansion, Geronimo was captured in 1886.  After many years as a U.S. prisoner, and something of a celebrity, he died of pneumonia in Oklahoma in 1909, where he was interred.  Legend has is that members of the Skull and Bones later took his skull, some bones, and a few other souvenirs back to their clubhouse.  Skull and Bones denies that it has the remains.

Now his relatives wish to return his remains to New Mexico, where he was born.  They are consequently suing under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which is designed to protect the rights of Native Americans to the remains of their family members. The U.S. has moved to dismiss the claim, saying that the law only applies to remains that have been disturbed since 1990.  Should the bones be restored?  For more, take a look at the stories at the Associated Press, the BBC, and Yale Daily News.  For an older look, you can check out the New York Times article from when the case began.

Each year the ABA TECHSHOW presents all the newest and best of legal technology to the world. And each year they end with a guide to 60 Sites in 60 Minutes. Attorneys and panelists at the show share their favorite internet sites. Some of the websites are law related, some of them are helpful in general, and some of them let you launch kittens into explosives. No matter what you are looking for there is probably something there for you, especially as the TECHSHOW website houses Hall of Fame lists back to 2001, and complete lists back to 2004 (The Kitten Cannon is 2008, just in case you were wondering.).

We are now nearly five months into the year that President Obama has given to close the Guantanamo Bay facility.  There has been a lot of political back and forth about whether or not this is a good idea, and what to do with the prisoners.  If you are interested, the Council on Foreign Relations has a nice page devoted to legal issues surrounding the closing of Guantanamo, including the legal status of prisoners.  They also cite many other helpful sources, like this Congressional Research Service report. 

Thanks to the Moritz Legal Information Blog for throwing this our way.

There are any number of ways in which arguments can go wrong.  In the legal profession in particular it is important to make sure that you recognize the kinds of logical fallacies the many people make without even being aware of it.  Bad Arguments is a little game that is meant to help you recognize logical errors.  It presents you with an argument, and then gives you four choices for what is wrong with it.  Many of the arguments used are from real life examples.  You can just ‘practice’ which will give you many repeat questions, or you can register, which will give you more questions and score for you.  Give it a try-it fun, and might be more difficult than you think. 

Thanks to Michael Poulshock at the Jureeka! blog for the site!

Most everyone in the legal world knows about THOMAS, which is the place to go for current legislative information.  Now you can have it come to you!  THOMAS now offers an RSS feed of the Congressional Record Daily Digest.  The Daily Digest is not a page turner in and of itself, but if you are interested in a particular piece of legislation that is currently up in the air it is a great place to go.  It keeps track of House and Senate chamber actions, committee meetings, etc.

The THOMAS RSS feed is one of five feeds offered by the Law Library of Congress.  You can also sign up for Current Legal Topics, the Global Legal Monitor, News & Events, or Webcasts.  Go take a look!

The Government Printing Office (GPO) has added four new collections to the Federal Digital System (FDsys).

• Congressional Calendars (104th Congress – Present)
• Congressional Committee Prints (105th Congress – Present)
• List of CFR Sections Affected (1997 – Present)
• Economic Indicators (1995 – Present)

More about FDsys.