Monthly Archives: January 2005

Urkaine Has Orange Secret Policement

Posted on January 17, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

History on the hoof, reported by the New York Times: How Ukraine's Top Spies Changed the Nation's Path. Fascinating, exciting, stuff.

Hollywood, are you listening?

Posted in Politics: International | Comments Off on Urkaine Has Orange Secret Policement

Life In the Bubble

Posted on January 15, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy (washingtonpost.com)

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

Posted in Politics: International | 9 Comments

Temporarily UnHomed

Posted on January 14, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

For the next two nights we'll be unhomed as they are going to varnish the floors with something that is awful to breath but lovely to look at. We had hoped to be at this stage about, oh, last summer, when it would have been far less disruptive to our lives, but there you are.

The good news is that this milestone means there are only a few major stages to go in our project: painting the inside and out of the old half of the house (we're living in the new half now), building the new driveway, doing all the little things that got skipped along the way, and fixing the mistakes that are fixable (so far there appear to be remarkably few mistakes, but that doesn't mean they are easy to fix). Then it's getting the stuff out of storage, figuring where it goes, window treatments, and landscaping. At this rate, I feel confident that we will be in position to have 'Housewarming – The ReBoot' this calendar year!

Coincidentally, the law school will also be closed for part of the long weekend because one of the buildings has to be tented for termites.

Posted in Adventures in Remodeling | Comments Off on Temporarily UnHomed

Toledo Cybersecurities Conference

Posted on January 14, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

The University of Toldeo College of Law is sponsoring what sounds like it will be a great conference on Cybersecurities regulation. I wish I could go. But as the first presenter on the first panel is my wife, someone has to stay home.

The Tenth Anniversary of Cybersecurities Law

Friday, April 8, 2005
9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
University of Toledo College of Law

Co-sponsored by the Cybersecurities Law Institute, the Stranahan National Issues Forum, and the University of Toledo Law Review

Keynote speaker:

John Reed Stark, Chief of Office of Internet Enforcement and Counselor to Director of Enforcement, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Recent Developments in Cybersecurities Fraud Enforcement

Moderator: Prof. Howard M. Friedman, Director, Cybersecurities Law Institute, University of Toledo

Presenters:

Panel I: The Challenge of Technology

Prof. Caroline M. Bradley, University of Miami School of Law
Information Society Challenges to Financial Regulation

Prof. Olufunmilayo Arewa , Case Western Reserve University School of Law: Securities Law and Technology: Translation and Accommodation in Cyberspace

Panel II: The SEC's New Securities Offering Rules (Proposals)

Broc Romanek, Esq., Editor, TheCorporateCounsel.net
David C. Lee, Esq., Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Washington, D.C.
E-Communications by Public Companies: Inside and Outside the Offering Context

Panel III: Innovative Uses of Cyberspace

Prof. Christine Hurt, Marquette University Law School
What Google Can't Tell Us About IPO Auctions (And What It Can)

Dr. Dirk Zetzsch, Heinrich Heine University (Dusseldorf)
Corporate Governance in Cyberspace-The Impact of Virtual Shareholder Meetings

Panel IV: The Internet and International Securities Issues
Dr. Paul U. Ali, University of New South Wales
Cyberderivatives-Online Retail Markets in International Equity Betting

Prof. Dimity Kingsford-Smith, University of New South Wales
Follow My Leader? Similarities and Differences in Australian and US Online Investing Regulation

Posted in Law: Internet Law | Comments Off on Toledo Cybersecurities Conference

Understatement Dept.

Posted on January 14, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

TPM tries on understatement for size.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: Is it troubling at all that this paragraph, the third in a piece tomorrow's Post, appears to be the White House's own description of how they'll sell their Social Security phase-out plan?

The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support — contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

Hmmm.

Even if you can't fool all of the people all of the time, can you sucker a majority?

Posted in Econ: Social Security | 1 Comment

We’re Just Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading

Posted on January 14, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Marty Lederman has another in his series of extraoridanry posts on the legal regulation of US torture and torture-like activiites. Here's one of the key legal points:

The problem, which I've tried to explain in somewhat soporific detail in posts here, here, here, here, here and here, is that Congress (at the urging of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush) has defined the term “torture” exceedingly narrowly—so narrowly, in fact, that OLC has concluded it does not cover techniques such as waterboarding, threats of live burial, and threats of rendition to nations that do torture. Those forms of highly coercive interrogation, going just up to the line of “torture” without going over, are generally unlawful, not

because they are “torture,” but because they fall within the category of conduct denominated “cruel, inhuman and degrading (“CID”) treatment,” i.e., conduct that “shocks the conscience” and hence would violate due process if it occurred within the U.S. Such CID treatment is categorically off limits to the military by virtue of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the President's directive that the military treat all detainees “humanely.” Such CID treatment is also categorically prohibited — even for the CIA — with respect to detainees protected by the Geneva Conventions; and such CID treatment would (by definition) be unconstitutional — even for the CIA and even as applied to Al Qaeda detainees — here in the U.S.

But the Administration has concluded the CID treatment is not unlawful when the CIA interrogates Al Qaeda suspects outside U.S. jurisdiction.

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | 2 Comments