Category: Manhattan

Happy Super Bowl Day!

May the best team win in Super Bowl 44 in Miami.  I’m rooting for Indianapolis, but New Orleans has the feel-good story, what with their own team history and their city’s history.  This Angry Asian Man blog post has some links to great articles about Scott Fujita, who’s a player on the New Orleans Saints; he was raised half-Japanese American, since he was adopted by a Japanese-American dad and a white mom – and cares about civil liberties issues since his Japanese-American grandparents were interned during WWII…. So, even though I’m rooting for the Colts for the Super Bowl, but Fujita sounds like a pretty cool guy.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick with an excellent analysis about what terrorism and politics have done to us:

But here’s the paradox: It’s not a terrorist’s time bomb that’s ticking. It’s us. Since 9/11, we have become ever more willing to suspend basic protections and more contemptuous of American traditions and institutions. The failed Christmas bombing and its political aftermath have revealed that the terrorists have changed very little in the eight-plus years since the World Trade Center fell. What’s changing—what’s slowly ticking its way down to zero—is our own certainty that we can never be safe enough and our own confidence in the rule of law.

So, are we letting fear win over the idea of and trust in rule of law? (NOT rule of man, but oh, well; humans are humans). My cynicism/pessimism is creeping in.

Friday night: siblings and I checked out Restaurant Week, by heading over to Mesa Grill.  Good stuff!

Midweek of the Last Week of January 2010

But there was no mistaking [Justice John Paul Stevens’] basic message.  “The rule announced today — that Congress must treat corporations exactly like human speakers in the political realm — represents a radical change in the law,” he said from the bench.  “The court’s decision is at war with the views of generations of… Americans.” – Adam Liptak.

Fascinating article by Liptak (link above) about J. Stevens, in light of the recent Citizens Union case (I’m not necessarily going to read the 100+ pps. decision anytime soon, but the CLE that I attended at the New York State Bar Association’s Annual Meeting covered it in a pretty serious way – the impact of the decision will have on campaign financing reform remains to be seen).  (plus, this year, the Annual Meeting is at the Hilton, not the Marriot Marquis; less Times Square, more Avenue of the Americas).

Fascinatingly cool item: Slate Poetry Editor/former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky with a poem by Michelangelo about how hard it was to paint the Sistine Chapel.

Is it Friday yet?  Seriously, this week is already feeling too long.

More December: A Cat and Lawyers

Odd photo in the Metropolitan Diary segment of the NY Times: man with a large cat on his head, while walking in lower Manhattan (I think it’s lower Manhattan; I recognize the background to be near B’way and Fulton). Cute kitty.

Various federal judges, as members of the Baker Street Irregulars, are quoted as having enjoyed the new Sherlock Holmes movie (as in, it’s not that bad) (hat tip to link from Sarah Weinman’s Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind).

Anthony Romero, Executive Director of ACLU, is apparently another lawyer who spends his weekends at the Hamptons; otherwise, an interesting profile on what he does on his Sundays (reading the NY Times, for instance).

On the eve of his new term, NY Times profiles Manhattan DA-elect Cyrus Vance, Jr. , through the perspective of his relationship with his father, Cyrus Vance, Sr.

On the eve of his last term, a look at Manhattan DA Robert Morganthau.

The passing of Percy Sutton.