So let's see -- computer monsters attack your awful "Twitter," that wise Latina was confirmed, and Judge Gold will be holding a telephonic hearing this morning in the UBS case.

Wait a minute, I have one more:

Should securities laws govern the sale of condo-hotel units?

Jared Beck thinks so:

"These were not simple real-estate purchases," said Jared Beck, an attorney in Miami who is working on dozens of suits against condo-hotel developers. "A hotel is a profit-making enterprise, and by purchasing a condo unit you are giving investment capital and you expect a return." Moreover, Mr. Beck said, "When you look through these marketing materials, there's no question that in the mind of a reasonable consumer you're going to think it's an investment."

Folks, I'm turning up the headphones and staying in bed.

Cue Der Stingle:

We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity

A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity

Effect without cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity

Isn't everybody tired of the law already?

Watching the Sotomayor confirmation hearings have left me with a major case of the law blahs.

It's like watching an intelligent woman have to repeatedly explain basic legal concepts to complete idiots, over and over and over again.

Precedent, "settled law," legal realism, it's obvious no one is interested in her answers so why don't these pompous windbags cut her loose already and put her on the bench?

I enjoyed Michael Mayo's column on Sotomayor's mother, and their preparations for Noche Buena every year in Margate. Finally a fresh angle on this dead story.

What else -- the 11th Circuit explains that when the government offers you GoLytley at the airport, it's probably not a good thing.

Hey -- our own Billy Shields won an award from the Florida Bar.

Congrats Billy!

Finally, today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch to the moon.

What better way to celebrate than love scenes between Diane Lane and the "blouse man," Viggo Mortenson?

So, anybody watch Senator Lindsey Graham yesterday afternoon -- what a d*%k.

Just in terms of cross-examination technique, what did you all think?

Graham's a pretty talented trial lawyer, yet here he is pulling out one of the lamest tricks in the book -- pretending to "forget" where he put the "wise Latina" quote so that he could ask Judge Sotomayor -- twice -- to repeat it from memory!

Then he's all over the map, moving from abortion to the death penalty in a seemingly random way. And some of the questions were exceedingly condescending, or just plain juvenile.

Was this some kind of Matlock/Columbo country lawyer thing, or is he that bad and disorganized a cross-examiner?

Well, I knew my interests in Steely Dan and Alan Kluger would someday converge, and sure enough, that day has come:

The lawsuit is anything but dry reading, depicting Michael Chow as a visionary who brought a designer restaurant serving "the complex and varied cuisine of China" to the West (served on fine china at steep prices) and Philippe Chow as "a lowest-level kitchen assistant."

"We tried to make it so that it was easy to read and quite frankly, so that a judge reading it would be interested in seeing the real human loss to Michael Chow," says Alan Kluger, Michael Chow's lawyer. (Kluger says they are seeking damages that could reach eight figures.)

The suit tells the story of Michael Chow and his "lifetime body of work," with references to his bringing the "ancient art of hand-pulled noodle-making to his restaurants" ("demonstrated in the 'Kung Fu Panda' movie DVD") and his 30th-anniversary party where "it is unlikely that such a famous and diverse group of people has ever been brought together before, or since, to commemorate such an event."

It claims that he's an innovator as the first to serve Chinese meals in courses, has been heralded as a cultural icon alongside McDonald's founder Ray Kroc and is "the one and only Mr. Chow."

I agree with Alan -- federal judges can be like Labrador Retriever puppies, lovable but easily distracted and prone to urinating from over-excitement when their masters come home.

You got to keep it fresh, or they will go back to gnawing on that old, comfortable social security disability appeal.

Some of you lawyer wonk types of all stripes (like my friend swlip) are probably already aware of the contretemps involving former clerk to Justice Scalia and NRO legal expert Ed Whelan, who on Saturday "outted" a legal blogger posting under the name "publius" over at Obsidian Wings.

Well, it turns out "publius" is a newly-hired, untenured law professor at South Texas College of Law named John Blevins.

BINGO -- I knew it!

Seriously, how this adds or detracts to anything is a mystery. If anything, as a long-time admirer of publius I'm happy to see he has a promising new job, but otherwise the "outting" seems to me somewhat petty and most importantly besides the point. It never really mattered to me what his name was, and it doesn't now.

And I see I'm not alone. Even Ed's colleague over at NRO's "Bench Memos," Jonathan Adler, writes in opposition to Ed's actions over at the conservative Volokh Conspiracy. I think Adler (a former pseudonymous blogger himself) makes a good point about the self-policing mechanism of doing this under a pseudonym on a regular basis:

While complete anonymity may enable someone to evade any accountability for intemperate or unwise remarks, the creation and maintenance of a pseudonym can have a disciplining effect on blogger behavior, and thus should be encouraged as an alternative to purely anonymous blogging and posting. Reputation effects and the desire to maintain readership can impose significant discipline. A pseudonym operates like a brand name, and the value of the brand is, at least in part, a function of how the pseudonymous blogger acts over time. This disciplining effect is hardly perfect, however, particularly when it comes to maintaining civility. As I believe the tone and snarkiness of many pseudonymous bloggers and commenters attests, a pseudonym can reduce a blogger’s vulnerability to personal attacks and can shield him or her from social sanctions fur uncivil conduct. I believe this means that those who utilize pseudonyms should take greater responsibility for the tone and content of their own posts so their pseudonymous shield does not become a license for nastiness and snark (and I hope I was able to do this when I used a pseudonym). But I also believe that, barring exceptional circumstances (e.g. something far worse than wrong-headed criticism) other bloggers should respect the choice of others to rely upon pseudonyms.

A.L. explains at length why he blogs under a pseudonym here. As a big-time civil litigator at one of the nation's largest law firms, he feels a cover is necessary because of client concerns etc. Again, it really wouldn't matter to me to know who he actually is -- I respect him for the content of his opinions, not the source of them.

Moving briefly to the substance of the dispute between Whelan and Blevins, it has to do with that old joke about three judges duck hunting, which I guess Judge Sotomayor once used as part of a graduation speech at Hofstra University.

Ok, the joke is as old as the hills, and most lawyers or former law clerks know of it. So the good Judge gets a big fat "C" for humor.

But to try to twist it into some kind of partisan attack on how "activist" Judge Sotomayor is or plans to be strikes me as unfair. It of course ties into the larger attack on Judge Sotomayor's comments about how appellate courts "make policy" and how wrong she was to say this.

As Volokh comprehensively demonstrates -- of course they do, particularly the Supreme Court. For example, the Supremes establish the common law regarding admiralty. They define the defenses to federal criminal charges. He mentions the standard for granting a preliminary injunction, and I would add all the federal common law governing attorney-client and work-product privileges, among many others.

Even regarding statutory interpretation, Volokh makes a strong case that considering policy and consequential or practical implications in tough cases (the kind that make it to the Supremes) are what the Justices expressly do and is a longstanding feature of American law, particularly given the vague texts or statutes that are often at issue. Just think about how federal antitrust law and RICO have evolved among the Circuits, or even Rule 23.

FWIW, I think any fair-minded lawyer or judge knows this.

Can you believe we are going to have several more months of this?

Sorry folks I got caught up writing an 11th Circuit response brief, and missed all the fun yesterday.

As I was working on the brief, I was reminded again of V.S. Naipaul's advice for young writers:

"I didn't know how you seduced a woman, how you excited her and thought of her pleasure. I hadn't got that from my upbringing. There was no one telling me about it or talking about it. I realised all this later, much later....A young taxi driver was driving me back from the [railway] station one day. He said his father had told him 'Always please the woman first.' A marvellous thing to tell the son, don't you think? I wish someone had told me that. But we grew up with this furtive incestuous idea."

Oops! Wrong passage.

I meant this:

1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.

2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.

3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.

4. Never use words whose meaning you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.

5. The beginner should avoid using adjectives, except those of colour, size and number. Use as few adverbs as possible.

6. Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete.

7. Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; short, clear, concrete sentences. It may be awkward, but it’s training you in the use of language. It may even be getting rid of the bad language habits you picked up at the university. You may go beyond these rules after you have thoroughly understood and mastered them.

Wow, imagine if we all wrote briefs like this (and judges wrote opinions that way!).

But Naipaul's comments about his relations with women merely highlight the obvious -- we are all the sum of our experiences. If Naipaul had not grown up as an Indian immigrant in colonial Trinidad, would he have produced the great post-colonial works that emerged from that background?

Same, sorry to say, with Glenn Garvin -- he is a product of having watched too many Simpsons episodes, and always rooting for Montgomery Burns.

Personally I'm sick to death of the confirmation process already, but here is the offending quote from Judge Sotomayor that Garvin is all lathered up about:

''Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum,'' Sotomayor says, ``our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.''

She should be asked about this, obviously.

But anyone who went to UM Law School (founded on "legal realism" principles) or who practices in the 3d DCA know that judges decide things based on a variety of factors, including the law, precedent, and sometimes what they had for breakfast.

In Judge Sotomayor's case, we have a few decades of opinions to digest, which Scotusblog has been kind enough to summarize (Glenn, you might want to cite to at least one opinion from her long judicial career that supports this "racial essentialism" charge).

Read the Pappas opinion and dissent (summarized here with links by Greenwald) before you throw around this kind of "identity politics" charge.

Although her comments about her ethnicity and background are clearly fair game and deserve some inquiry, you also have to examine in her case several decades of judging before simply pronouncing her biased and racist.

Unless you're the TV writer for the Herald, of course.