Today’s literary fraud update…

January 26th, 2012

…comes to us by way of our great and good friend Earl Cooley III on Google+.

It starts with the arrest of Mitchell Gross on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. According to the indictment, Gross defrauded a woman he met online of $3 million.

Okay, so? Mitchell Gross is also known as “Mitchell Graham”; he published fantasy books with HarperCollins and mysteries with Tor and Forge.

And then this is where it really starts to get weird. Gross claims to be a championship fencer (there are some questions about that claim; it seems clear, at the very least, that he was not on the US Olympic fencing teams in 1984 and 1988). Gross also claimed to have been a practicing lawyer for twenty years, and that he quit practicing in order to go back to school and earn a doctorate in neuropsychology. (Gross was actually disbarred in 1990, and convicted of practicing law without a license in 1992.)

And then it gets weirder. Gross may have set up his own fake writing contest, complete with judging by Ben Bova, and used that to get published. (“Mr. Bova told us that he had indeed been hired as a contest judge–the only one, so far as he was aware. He was a bit surprised to discover that there was also only one finalist, but went ahead and did as he was asked–to read the manuscript and judge if it was fit to win.“)

The best roundup of this is at the Writer Beware blog. Be sure to read the comments, as people seem to be digging up more information on Mr. Gross. There’s also a lot of good stuff in the linked AJC article.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Speaking of traffic lights…

January 26th, 2012

Battleswarm was doing a better job of covering the red-light camera issue in Houston than I was. However, I ran across an item (by way of Overlawyered) that I thought was worth sharing.

When the referendum outlawing the red light cameras was being litigated before District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes, Judge Hughes blocked Francis and Randy Kubosh, the people behind the referendum, from participating in Houston’s lawsuit against American Traffic Solutions (ATS). The Kuboshs (and other people) were concerned that Houston was going to go into the tank for ATS, “especially after ATS and Houston’s lawyers sat together at the same table during oral arguments.”

Yeah. Well. The Fifth Circuit ruled on Tuesday that, no, Judge Hughes, you can’t do that.

“There is no federal authority nor state law prohibiting intervention of right in this type of case,” Chief Judge Edith H. Jones wrote for the appellate panel. “These intervenors are unique because they engineered the drive that led to a city charter amendment over the nearly unanimous, well funded, and longstanding opposition of the mayor and city council… They have raised substantial doubts about the city’s motives and conduct in its defense of the litigation with ATS. Without these intervenors’ participation, the city might well be inclined to settle the litigation on terms that preserve the adverse ruling on the charter amendment and thus preserve its flexibility to reinstate red light cameras in the future. This is no matter of simply defending city policy of one sort or another: it involves millions of dollars of revenue to city coffers during a period of considerable economic uncertainty.”

Meanwhile, the city settled with ATS for $4.8 million. Noted:

Hughes has close ties with ATS, having served on the bench for 25 years with Judge David Hittner, the father of ATS General Counsel George Hittner.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 26, 2012.

January 26th, 2012

Legendary actor Nicol Williamson passed away on December 16. However, his death was apparently not reported until yesterday.

…during the Broadway run of Paul Rudnick’s 1991 comedy, “I Hate Hamlet,” in which he played the ghost of John Barrymore, he criticized the play in interviews, audibly offered coaching to his fellow actors onstage, and finally, during a staged swordfight, ignored the choreography and smacked the actor Evan Handler with the flat blade of the sword, prompting Mr. Handler to leave the stage and resign.

And:

A young actress who shared the stage with him in 1965 and who spoke to The New York Times said of him: “Drinking, fighting and wenching — God, he’s fabulous!”

(In addition to playing Hamlet and Macbeth, he was also Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”.)

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Traffic.

January 25th, 2012

The city of Galveston has placed all twelve members of the city’s traffic division on “paid administrative leave”. Apparently, there’s some sort of investigation going on.

Note: these are not Galveston PD officers, and don’t issue traffic tickets. These are the folks who maintain the city traffic lights and suchlike. Which kind of makes this a full on “WTF?!” moment. (As the HouChron notes, there is a budget for the division, but they don’t collect money from the public, so you’d figure the chances for skimming and embezzlement are slim.)

Posted in Clippings | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: The final countdown…

January 25th, 2012

…for James Farentino.

I really wish someone would put “The Bold Ones” (or even the individual “wheels” within the series, such as Farentino and Ives’s “The Lawyers”) out on DVD. From what I saw back when I could get RTN, that was actually a pretty good series.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Sentiment.

January 24th, 2012

My opinion of baseball is well established.

My opinion of the New York Yankees is perhaps less well established; in brief, I consider them as an organization to be the representatives of Satan on Earth.

That being said…

After Posada finished his opening statement, Diana Munson, the widow of Yankees great Thurman Munson, spoke. She credited Posada for inspiring her to watch baseball again. Posada had considered Thurman Munson, who died in 1979 when the plane he was piloting crashed in Ohio, a hero.
Diana Munson said she now has loved two Yankees catchers in her life.
“I think he and Thurman would have been best buds,” Munson said.

Lot of cedar pollen in the air today. That must be why my eyes are watering.

(Hattip: His Grubes.)

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

A quick one that kicked over my giggle box.

January 24th, 2012

HTTP Status Cats.

I’m particularly fond of this one. (Yes, that is a real status code, although it is technically HTCPCP, not HTTP. See RFC 2324. Yes, there are documented implementations of this.)

(Credit where credit is due: TJIC on Twitter.)

Posted in Geek, Photography | Comments Closed

This obit watch does not compute. Warning! Warning!

January 24th, 2012

The Onion A/V Club is reporting the death of Dick Tufeld, noted television announcer and voice actor, perhaps most famous as the voice of “Lost in Space”‘s Robot.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: January 24, 2012.

January 24th, 2012

Before we jump into this week’s TMQ, we thought we’d mention D.J. Gallo’s list of the worst college basketball blowouts in Division I history. “Long Island 179, Medgar Evers 62”. It took all of Long Island to defeat one guy? And “Texas 102, San Marcos Baptist 1”. “San Marcos Baptist Academy was — and is — a boarding school for teenagers.”

After the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Like Saunders through the hourglass…

January 24th, 2012

…so go the Washington Wizards.

Flip Saunders out as coach. 51-130 over three seasons, but the Wizards started 2-15 this season.

(Thanks to Lawrence for the tip.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Noted.

January 24th, 2012

Today is “Bad Website Day” over at Lawrence’s.

We’re talking really bad. Awesomely bad. Eyeballs bleeding bad.

So bad that I’m linking to his posts, rather than the websites themselves, just for your protection.

See how kind and caring I am?

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

I hope they get tongue prints.

January 23rd, 2012

LAT headline: “Gene Simmons look-alike robs stores in Sacramento“.

(First comment: “That’s Paul Stanley you morons.” How can you tell from that photo?)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Happy dance!

January 23rd, 2012

The Supreme Court has handed down their decision in the case of United States v. Jones, the case involving attaching GPS tracking devices to vehicles.

The court held that, yes, attaching a GPS tracking device to someone’s vehicle is a search under the Fourth Amendment, and yes, this does require a search warrant. The decision is here.

Even better: it was a 9-0 ruling. (Five of the justices signed on to the majority opinion; the other four wrote a separate concurring opinion.)

Here’s preliminary coverage from Wired‘s “Threat Level” blog. I haven’t had a chance to review the full ruling yet; I may have additional links or commentary later.

Edited to add: Correction. According to the WP, there were two concurring opinions; I missed one in my quick skim of the ruling. Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan signed on to one concurrence; Sotomayor wrote a second concurrence, and also signed on to the majority opinion.

Edited to add 2: Discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Still wading through this, but part 2 makes a good point; the Court did not actually rule per se that GPS tracking requires a warrant, but that it is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Not all searches require a warrant (see Terry v. Ohio or Chimel v. California) but, in general, the types of searches that the Court has held do not require a warrant involve “exigent circumstances” and are highly limited in scope. I find it hard to see the Court applying an “exigent circumstances” exception to GPS tracking in just about any case.

ETA3: And one of Volokh’s commenters makes a good point: the police apparently had a warrant, but botched the execution of it (“The warrant authorized installation in the District of Columbia and within 10 days, but agents installed the device on the 11th day and in Maryland.”) and then tried to argue that they didn’t need no stinking warrant anyway.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Very interesting indeed, Mr. Bond.

January 22nd, 2012

One might go so far as to say “Damn Interesting”.

Many of my friends and some bloggers seem to be regular followers of this site:

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 22, 2012.

January 22nd, 2012

Joe Paterno is dead.

As opposed to last night, when he was apparently declared dead but actually wasn’t. (Good on Devon Edwards for standing up and taking responsibility, but I still feel sorry for him; especially since it sounds like they were taken in by a forged email and a dishonest source.)

Also among the dead: Philip Vannatter, LAPD detective. I know, you probably never heard of him. He led the Ron Goldman/Nicole Brown Simpson investigation and the Roman Polanski investigation, two of the LAPD’s biggest cases.

One colleague told The Times in 1994 that Vannatter was a bear of a man who, when he kicked in a door while arresting a robbery suspect once on the Westside, he knocked the door off the hinges. When Vannatter worked as a detective in Venice in the 1970s he would have contests with co-workers to see how long they could hold a sledgehammer outstretched in front of them with one arm.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

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