Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer : Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Jamie Spencer Law Firm : DWI, DUI, Drug Possession : Serving Georgetown, Round Rock, San Marcos, Travis, Williamson, and Hays County, Texas

Via Houston’s Clear Thinkers, make sure to watch all the way to the end if you want your graduate degree…

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Via an @arsenicjulep tweet of a Newsweek article, “Why We Believe Lies, Even When We Learn The Truth”:

Some people form and cling to false beliefs about health-care reform (or Obama's citizenship) despite overwhelming evidence thanks to a mental phenomenon called motivated reasoning, says sociologist Steven Hoffman, visiting assistant professor at the University at Buffalo.

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Everyone knows that Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in 1969, abandoning a female companion who drowned.

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Once upon a time I thought I could keep track of all the criminal defense blogs out there. Then I thought I could track Texas defense lawyer blogs. Now I can’t even keep track of the CDL bloggers in Austin, but here’s a list of the ones I know about:

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I’m about halfway through “This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History Of Getting High In America” by Ryan Grim which chronicles America’s centuries old love/hate relationship with various intoxicants (short version: the people seem to love, the legislators hate).

Then this gem from Drug WarRant, an op-ed piece from 99 years ago in a San Francisco newspaper:

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July 23, 2009 could have been a very good day for Houston lawyer Andy Nolen.

On that day, one of his clients, “jerry k.”, decided to give him a token of appreciation, a review on Yahoo local of all Nolen had done for him:

THIS GUY IS GREAT. Got to court early and stayed like 3 hours with my family.

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Late on a Thursday several years ago I was waiting for an after hours appointment that was a few minutes late. And it had been a long week already.

The potential new client(PNC) arrives and we sit down to chat about his case. He’s about to be indicted in Travis County for felony DWI, and he’s going around interviewing lawyers to see who he wants to hire. Fair enough, that’s what free consultations are for.

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Certainly the most gullible among us must wonder at times why the get rich quick gurus advertising on late night TV don’t make millions for themselves by using their own repossessed real estate advice, instead of selling all of us shmucks the secrets to eternal wealth for just three-easy-payments of $99.

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Reset your RSS readers accordingly.

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This excerpt from the ABA Journal speaks for itself, so I’ll just file it in the “don’t try this at home” category, and move on:

A lawyer says his letter threatening to reveal a prosecutor’s alleged car registration violation was intended as a joke, but Gage County Attorney Randy Ritnour didn’t take it that way.

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Oooops. According to Uncle Mike, who was kind enough to email me about it, I have the details wrong in my first marijuana arrest ever post. He’s done a good deal more actual research on it – in the sense that I’ve not done any, and was guilty of playing telegraph – and here’s a snippet of his version:

The historic October 8th, 1937 Denver Post account stated that Caldwell had “…admitted to selling marijuana cigarets [sic] to Baca…” , thereby suggesting they were busted together while conducting business.

This piece of history is contrary to a previous October 6th Denver Post article entitled, “U.S. Agents Arrest Man On Charge Of Selling Marijuana” and Caldwell’s federal criminal files. Evidently, Caldwell was actually convicted for attempting to sell three joints to “a man he met on the street” named Claude Morgan and possession of 4 pounds later found hidden in his Lothrop Hotel room.

When caught dealing to Morgan, Caldwell reportedly threw the three joints in a trash can, providing federal narcotic agents with evidence for his arrest.
 

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I sent an open records request just now to Austin Police Department to find out the costs to taxpayers for this:

In an undercover prostitution-reversal sting, the Austin Police Department Central Metro Tactical Unit arrested 23 males, all varying in age.

Undercover police officers posed as prostitutes and when men agreed to service terms, they were arrested on the scene.

I’ll update the post when I get a response. In the meantime, any one care to hazard a guess as to how much it cost taxpayers to dress up female officers as prostitutes and make 23 arrests for prostitution?
 

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